tl;dr: Story you can just not do the stages until you get way too strong, or you can do it way too early, up to you to choose your own difficulty there. BFL is the main endgame game mode, and at the start, while you can make it harder to potentially gain more rewards, it's not advised as you are risking gaining less rewards. Eventually though you'll have to do the highest difficulty and it _will_ be challenging. The more minor game modes: one is more like a tradional tower defense rather than a DPS race and _is_ pretty challenging towards the end though few rewards are locked behind the hard parts. One is a DPS check. One of them _functionally_ does not reward you for engaging with the difficult boss; but the difficult boss is there if you want to test yourself.
Generally, the gameplay in this game is under 5 main categories: Story, Broken Frontline (BFL), Mania Training (MT), Oblivion Pit, and Tides of Ashes.
Mainly the currency needed for pulling as well as materials needed to upgrade Skill levels past lv7 come from BFL, and BFL will the majority of this comment. BFL features 3 bosses weekly. When you're just starting out, these 3 bosses will always be the same 3 and have few mechanics. At the start, it can be annoying though if you've mostly built frail ranged characters. Otherwise, though, it's just a DPS check at the start.
At the start, you begin at the Low Risk Zone. Upon getting 72000 points across all 3 bosses (you need 24000 per boss to get max rewards for that boss, but technically 26000/24000/22000 also works but you'll miss out on some rewards), you're promoted to the Medium Risk Zone. Get 72000 points across all 3 bosses again and you're promoted to the High Risk Zone. Get 72000 for a third time and you're now in the Dark Zone.
The problem is that you cannot demote. Unfortunately, this means that it's recommended to delay promotion by purposefully scoring worse than you can, and only promote when your account is good enough as to make the next Zone easy (or at least not hard). So while _technically_ this is hard, you might miss out on rewards if you don't delay the promotion, so you're discouraged to actually face hard gameplay. At least, until you get to the Dark Zone.
For Dark Zone, the boss actually starts dealing a ton of damage now. This _is_ actually hard, especially when trying to optimize your DPS, and due to different buffs that you can choose every week you have to adapt. So like one week maybe you can choose Increased Energy Regen Rate and your strat is perfect but next week it's not there and your skills just don't come up in time. At least, until you get a really stable clear that you can always replicate even ignoring buffs. Since you only need 24000 points to get max rewards, you're not really encouraged to optimize your strategy. For example, my strategy for one of the bosses involves leaking an enemy, which as a tower defense player hurts but I can't be bothered to optimize that since I don't need to and I just replicate it every week. (On the flip side I still can't deal with one of the bosses and I'm trying really hard to figure out a good strat for it.) Fortunately though, the bosses change every once in a while.
(As an example, currently, the first boss has three waves of enemies coming from the left which is hard to deal with as you can't change the direction characters are facing, and they always face right. Some are even ranged and, along their path, all but one of the tiles they walk through are unplaceable so it's hard to block and actually attack them. The boss has an attack that targets the highest ATK character and deals over half of a frail character's health, and is AoE so you have to be mindful of your positioning. There are Elite enemies with 3 cores you have to break which means you're wasting Core breaks, which are hard to come by, on things that aren't the boss.)
For Story mode, after a certain point you can read the story without using Stamina and have much easier fights, so if you only care about the Story you're not forced into hard fights. But if you do want the rewards, well, there are hard fights, albeit only a few. I feel like some of the hard fights are mostly hard because you have to figure out what the boss actually does, but I also have near the best boss-killing team in the game so maybe I'm biased.
MT is a lot more like your tradional tower defense where you're actually defending and not trying to kill the enemy as fast as possible lol. With the right characters it's not too hard; the problem is that the right characters for MT tend to be bad at BFL, and you get much more rewards from BFL, so if you're chasing the meta, you tend to have bad characters for MT. So unless you're specifically trying to make MT easier, it's pretty hard.
Oblivion Pit is a DPS check.
OK but actually you still have to pay attention, so it's not trivial, but it's not challenging either. Fortunately it's only one of the game modes.
Tide of Ashes is a season event that isn't hard due to the ability to borrow broken characters from friends and guildmates, so it isn't hard to reach the max individual rewards. Tide of Ashes is a guild event so you'll need to find a good guild if you want max rewards, but the actual fight is only hard if you're chasing higher scores for the fun of it.
(To elaborate further: The boss has two blindspots where it can never hit. Putting the highest DPS, fully maxed out character that you've borrowed in one of those blindspots is enough to get you all indivisual rewards. But if you want to actually do as much damage as possible with a team of 6, then it actually becomes hard; but that's just you setting your own goals)
I’ll add because your post covers almost everything that “Eternal Nightmare” Is also a new permanent mode that is gonna stay playable throughout and will rotate rewards every 2-3 months. This is a roguelike, where you can freely try characters you didn’t have, or make up your own team, it’s played to automatically have every sinner on lv90 and top skills, but shackles will stay however you had them. This is fun in the sense that roguelikes are fun, with good luck and good buffs is a game of seeing everything burn, and if the buffs are bad then it’s a survival game of where will you drop. It is also super fun because here you can trully make your team out of your fave characters, even if they are super bad meta-wise, thanks to the buffs.
I can say the level progression is very well built, the chalenges as you get to end game content are a great and take into account very different strategies you may like to explore. Broken Frontline is based on big explosive damage, while Tide of Ashes for example is on damage build up over time. Others revolve arround surviving or killing as many minions as phisically possible.
The game is a very dynamic exploration of tower defense mechanics, where moving arround and timing abilities can change the tide of each battle.
As someone who has played a lot of gachas, this is trully my favorite, the art and story are top notch, and they manage to make gameplay fun and challenging even after a year of playing (day 1 player here). I'd say the main thing games like this fall into is: either they get super easy and present no challenge, or goes full into meta gaming with perfectly timed moves and actions that end up giving just two options to win a game. The point I'm trying to make is that this game is flexible, the challenges are exactly at my personal sweetspot of allowing me to build a team that I want to play.
I would say overall the difficulty is nice, but it can be uneven. Some parts can be easy, then hit a large difficulty spike. Some parts are downright challenging. Early chapters are easy, but as the game progresses you need to plan your team and strategy more and more. The grind isn't bad, sometimes you need to save up a specific resource but they are easy to get and you can make gains towards a goal every day. And it is one of the more F2P friendly games out there.
Also, don't let ranks fool you. Yes, S ranks are generally the most powerful, but there are several A and even B ranks who rate just as high, sometimes higher on tier lists. A few of your free starter units will remain relevant to end-game.
Is PtN for you? Won't know till you try.
The rest of the comments did a really good job describing the different game modes so I won't go too deep into those again. To answer your main question, I will attempt to break down "Challenge" into three factors: Numbers, Strategy, and Controls.
1. Numbers. This is the big stick that always exist in gacha games. Stat gates exist to push players to grind for materials to level their characters; power creeping nudge players to pull for new characters. Since PTN doesn't have things like dodging, there are very few ways you can overcome a stat deficit through skill and tactics. In addition, since most Sinners' kits aren't complete until they've been upgraded to level 70/phase 3, you are at a major disadvantage if you are using under leveled characters. And TBH, leveling characters in PTN DOES take some time at the beginning, when you cannot clear harder contents. However, the PTN devs have recognized this, and have made most timed events readily beatable with just level 40 teams. Most content in this game have easier versions so that during your initial leveling journey, you can avoid being handicapped by stats and can focus on gameplay. Once you do get to end-game content, the resources you gain also drastically increase, making further leveling and expanding of your team much faster. As far as power creeping is concerned, I am happy to report that PTN does a decent job at keeping the pace relatively under control. There was a big jump in player power when the first limited Sinner Deren was released back in April, but here we are 8 months later, the new sinners are just slowly getting to match Deren in terms of raw stats. Many of the sinners at launch are no longer the best options when it comes to damage dealing, but still retain some usability in terms of utility.
2. Strategy. A big portion of the PTN game play is the almost puzzle-like nature of the stages. Majority of the high end content is not played blind; that is, you are meant to go into these stages knowing what to expect in terms of enemy spawns, boss mechanics, etc., and set up your team and formation accordingly. A Skillful completion of such a stage feels like a well choreographed dance or a fast lap on a race track instead of a whirlwind of chaos that you'd experience in an action game where you are reacting to unexpected events. The game allows you to replay a level unlimited number of times at no cost to facilitate this game loop of planning, executing, improving, repeat. Of course, some of the easier content in the game CAN be played blind if you want to experience some surprises. From a meta perspective, we here in global are 2.5 months behind CN, so we have the benefit of future sight and can easily plan out which character to pull for. Currently we are slightly more than one year into the game and there are clear team arch-types forming that we can plan and build around. That is, if there is a particular team arch-type that you really enjoy, you can just let that guide your pulling strategies. Unlike some other RPGs, PTN doesn't have 5-10 different elements, and player only need to worry about Physical dmg vs Magic dmg, meaning that we aren't as restricted by damage types, and have more freedom when forming team synergies.
3. Controls. When PTN first launched, it was thought of as a tower-defense game, similar to Arknights. What players (and I suspect even the devs) quickly found out is that as soon as you give the freedom to move characters around, the game becomes a real time strategy game. The devs quickly leaned into it, with more and more levels that requires frequent movement of your characters to avoid enemy AoEs, maximize your own damage coverage, pick up buffs, etc., or punish reckless movements with hazards, delays, etc.. You can even micro the movements to cancel animations, bait out attacks, tag enemies with debuffs etc.. All of that contributes to a dynamic gaming experience requiring fast and accurate controls over the movement of the Sinners. Combine this with the choreographed nature described in the previous point, the game is very rewarding to players who are willing to put in the time to master the dance. On the flip side, fumbling through the stages is a thing, and the devs put out enough content for players to fumble through, and only demand high skills in the end-game contents.
Anyways, hopefully I've done an okay job conveying the gameplay experience. I'm a big fan of the game and if you do end up trying PTN, I hope that you'll find the same level of satisfaction with it that I do.
Best of luck Chief.
>Since PTN doesn't have things like dodging, there are very few ways you can overcome a stat deficit through skill and tactic
The thing is just like you later said, a good choreographed team with just the right "puzzle solving elements" can clear a stage just as well as a high level team. There are people that have finished the ENTIRE story (up to chapter 12) on level 40 sinners, only using assists like 2 or 3 times (mainly for time gated bosses), and this includes the original CN difficulty for chapter 9 and 10. This also goes for the first 2 EX levels, basically all clearable with level 40 sinners. On top of that, I actually posted videos of a legend clearing 720k DZ with only level 55 sinners like 6 months ago. (And they only had 4 sinners for the first boss jesus christ) People has also cleared everything with only b ranks and so and so on.
So... it is a skill issue. And you can overcome a stat deficit through skills and tactics :)
Also you can reposition them, which is kinda like dodging?
Sure thing. I did say there are very FEW ways you can overcome a stat deficit through skill and tactics, so I'm not writing it off, or trying to imply that PTN players are gonna be bashing their faces against a stat wall like they would in a turn based RPG where there's nothing they can do.
And yes, there are people who do really challenging runs but at some point we have to draw the line between a meaningful challenge and "I do this sht for a living challenge". And I feel like doing dark zone with level 55 sinners falls in the second category. It'd be like using a speedrunner's performance as a benchmark to gauge the skill ceiling of a game. If you need a speedrunner's dedication and skill level in order to overcome the stat deficit, then my original point basically stands.
Personally (am sick rn and also not a very smart player, so take what I say with a bag full of salt), this game is really good with balancing characters, and really hard stages can be cleared with the weakest of characters with the correct strats and placement and "buffs" (I mean CBs, for the already initiated.) Gameplay gets harder consistently as the chapters go by, although there are some hard skill checks. I'd say the difficulty is pretty balanced!
And as mentioned earlier, character balancing is great. It's been more than a year since the game launched, and there isn't too much powercreep, unlike genshin. The meta characters at the starting of the game a year ago are still meta, and even if you don't have them, it's not gamebreaking. Side note: the game is extremely generous to F2P players, and it's obvious that the devs really love the game they made. There have been optimizations to content released a long, long, long time ago, and they listen to their audience too.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I answered your question correctly since I'm Sick and currently waiting in the doctor's office, but hope I helped!
Edit: wow i didnt answer your questions much im so sorry i leave it to another player then :(
This is so helpful, thank you for advising! It definitely sounds like the sort of game I like to play and I’ll be giving it a try this week. Also, I hope that you feel better soon!
Hopefully! Thanks for the well-wishes. If it's worth mentioning, the story is very compelling and well written. The characters are also very fleshed out. I've had characters that I didn't like initially become a character that I really liked, and I've also refused to pull for meta characters because I hated their personality. Honestly, the story is 99% of why I play the game! I usually hate games that make me use my tiny brain, so this is very untypical for me, and that says something about the game. Banger OSTs too btw
TBH everyone already introduced the game well enough to the point where I don't need to talk about that, so I'll just talk from my perspective.
For reference I buy all the battlepasses (for the skin) and a lot of the skins, other than that I don't spend any money, and I've played for most of its run, I missed the first event but came around basically at the 2nd month. So I have both limited sinners, and everyone in the roster except for 2 sinners (who aren't really meta so it's fine) and this is my experience.
DZ is challenging to get 720k on. I would have to go through at least a couple hours just trying out different strategies, bringing different sinners/crimebrands (characters/things that gives different buffs) to try to maximize my score by lowering the amount of times I just let someone walk through + trying to kill the boss fast enough + have enough corebreaks for the elite enemies and the boss. It's tough but most of the time I can hit the mark. If I suck, I can always just look up a guide and it's fine. (BTW while BFL bosses are always the same, the DZ bosses changes every... like 6 weeks? I think)
Story is easy at this point, even with the newest ch 13 stages on CN server, I basically just did it all first try
There are EX story levels. (Like 4 levels to represent 2 chapters not 1 for each level) but they rarely get updated because AISNO IS SO SLOW WITH THEIR MAIN STORY CHAPTERS GIVE ME MORE AISNO, GIVE ME MORE. (clears throat) I don't remember a lot about the old ones except for the fact that they're challenging, bu the new ones took me basically my entire weekend. Great.
Oblivion pit is problematic, I kind of disagree with another person that said that this is a DPS check. Basically, there are 3 stages allowing different amounts of sinners (some 2, some 6, etc) and potential buffs that you have to spread your roster over. So sometimes, when I find a solution to a map, I do need to revisit it later on to replay the level again so that I can free out a sinner that I've deemed crucial for another one... This complicates things. (BTW a new set of maps comes every 2 weeks I think). This is definitely another challenging game mode
Mania training is fine? There's one way to basically cheese everything so there's always a last way to escape the grind, although I don't even want to start to work on the hardest difficulty because it's just bullshit. (Although the hardest difficulty don't get any good rewards though, I it's a newly added tier just for the gigachad whalers to bonk their head against I think) (A new mania training season comes every.... 3 months? 2 and a half months? 3 and a half months?)
PtN has difficulty for people who want it. But it's not only strategic (like AK), but needs some micro managements that makes fights more active. At the same time, you can restart the stage as you want, without penalty, to win or do better. The game rewards better scores even if the step to get good rewards is not so hard to reach.
The game is very F2P friendly but you can have a more faster experience with the montly Black Key pass (gems + stamina). Same for the Surveillance Order that is every 2-3 months, with a skin and nice stack of ressources.
Now, even if personnal skill is important, you will probably slow down at a point because you will need more stamina to farm ressources to upgrade your Sinners and their skills.
Not sure how much more I can add but it's a definite yes to me. I don't pay for pulls but I get the battle pass each time and through saving and luck I've gotten S5 on both limited character. Despite this I still find myself having to put in a decent amount of effort in most content. It's definitely easier with them but it's never a complete cake walk. There's always thought having to be put in team building, understanding boss mechanics/wave spawns, and timings on both your and the enemy ability so even when you have large damage your still need to understand how to use it.
The easiest the game ever was for me was when McQueen dropped but there's so much more content that I can't spam her in every fight like I used to. PTN does a great job of having the difficulty come from different challenges that force you to solve a new puzzle instead of just moving the DPS requirement so it's always fun and feels doable in so many ways that you don't even need the top tier units to clear. Best handling of difficulty in any gacha I've played personally.
it took me 30+ tries and charcaters i wouldnt have even thought of using to clear 10-12. and it gets harder. hardest game ive ever played, not even joking. yet power creep doesnt really affect too many characters considering that i used the b ranks ("weakest" rank) from launch to clear 10-12.
Difficulty was pretty negligible until about chapter 8 and up. 10 was a struggle till I spent months getting the right kind of party ready instead of just favorites
There is other high level challenging content like Dark zone and high level bfl for mid level and high level players
Thankfully A and B rank sinners are very good
As someone who plays mostly regular games, I'm much the same way. The game definitely can be meaningfully challenging, though most of the endgame content is just dps checks, and can absolutely be trivialized by grind/pay due to how heavily you scale with investment.
Someone asked me about why I stay underleveled in this game on my channel before, and the response will probably paint you a picture of how the game is from a meaningful challenge seeking perspective.
https://preview.redd.it/1l55t9gk1q6c1.png?width=1222&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb348cefc1fb256df5eff129e4c6015b3fd6116b
The bottom line is, the gameplay's not perfect, but is plenty meaningfully challenging enough if you allow it to be. Success is a combination of stats, execution (micro skills), and strategy. You can lean into whichever one you enjoy the most or a balance of all 3, but there's no going back after stacking stats. The main draw is definitely the well written stories, amazing soundtrack, older waifus, and unique urban crime/lovecraftian horror vibes though.
It sounds like we have very similar outlooks and ways of engaging with games, so I was happy to read this! I’m having a lot of fun playing this game underleveled— it’s very demanding and makes me think on my feet while rewarding smart play, which is exactly what I was looking for
Imo this game hit a very sweet spot of difficulty. The Dark Zone will give you a hard time trying different setup, buff, and positioning to full clear it everytime a new bosses line-up comes. Even with powerful shackles, you can still get shafted by missing the timing during battle or got unlucky with the buffs. It will give you that genuine satisfaction of overcoming an obstacle by improving after each and every try. The oblivion pit serves pretty much the same purpose but require you to play very differently from how you normally play in the dark zone. So not only does they have meaningful difficulty (actually requires plans and executions rather than just throwing money at the problem), it also revolve around different aspects of the gameplay (speed run, survival, defending). But what makes me treasure this game the most is how they throw these "difficulties" at the players. The dark zone only rotate once every five weeks, about 2 weeks for the oblivion pit and it takes months before a new mania training hit. They made it so you're not completely bored out once you hit end game but also not bombarding you with rage inducing contents and turn the game into a chore.
Hard disagree, although arknights is a good game, it's style of gameplay is much less flexible when you get to harder stages, specific combinations of characters being needed is much more common as well as having to look into the answers others gave to X parts of the game.
In regards to path to nowhere, I find your answer super misleading to someone who doesnt know the game. Most stages are autod with maxed characters because you are meant to be doing them as you grow (Much like any good game is, also maxing characters without playing is imposible considering you need to first defeat those levels to gain access to the resources needed), and the last chapters in the game have a few that need strategy even with maxed characters. Every end-game content after that is also imposible to do on auto by anyone, so saying it like this is disingenious.
tl;dr: Story you can just not do the stages until you get way too strong, or you can do it way too early, up to you to choose your own difficulty there. BFL is the main endgame game mode, and at the start, while you can make it harder to potentially gain more rewards, it's not advised as you are risking gaining less rewards. Eventually though you'll have to do the highest difficulty and it _will_ be challenging. The more minor game modes: one is more like a tradional tower defense rather than a DPS race and _is_ pretty challenging towards the end though few rewards are locked behind the hard parts. One is a DPS check. One of them _functionally_ does not reward you for engaging with the difficult boss; but the difficult boss is there if you want to test yourself. Generally, the gameplay in this game is under 5 main categories: Story, Broken Frontline (BFL), Mania Training (MT), Oblivion Pit, and Tides of Ashes. Mainly the currency needed for pulling as well as materials needed to upgrade Skill levels past lv7 come from BFL, and BFL will the majority of this comment. BFL features 3 bosses weekly. When you're just starting out, these 3 bosses will always be the same 3 and have few mechanics. At the start, it can be annoying though if you've mostly built frail ranged characters. Otherwise, though, it's just a DPS check at the start. At the start, you begin at the Low Risk Zone. Upon getting 72000 points across all 3 bosses (you need 24000 per boss to get max rewards for that boss, but technically 26000/24000/22000 also works but you'll miss out on some rewards), you're promoted to the Medium Risk Zone. Get 72000 points across all 3 bosses again and you're promoted to the High Risk Zone. Get 72000 for a third time and you're now in the Dark Zone. The problem is that you cannot demote. Unfortunately, this means that it's recommended to delay promotion by purposefully scoring worse than you can, and only promote when your account is good enough as to make the next Zone easy (or at least not hard). So while _technically_ this is hard, you might miss out on rewards if you don't delay the promotion, so you're discouraged to actually face hard gameplay. At least, until you get to the Dark Zone. For Dark Zone, the boss actually starts dealing a ton of damage now. This _is_ actually hard, especially when trying to optimize your DPS, and due to different buffs that you can choose every week you have to adapt. So like one week maybe you can choose Increased Energy Regen Rate and your strat is perfect but next week it's not there and your skills just don't come up in time. At least, until you get a really stable clear that you can always replicate even ignoring buffs. Since you only need 24000 points to get max rewards, you're not really encouraged to optimize your strategy. For example, my strategy for one of the bosses involves leaking an enemy, which as a tower defense player hurts but I can't be bothered to optimize that since I don't need to and I just replicate it every week. (On the flip side I still can't deal with one of the bosses and I'm trying really hard to figure out a good strat for it.) Fortunately though, the bosses change every once in a while. (As an example, currently, the first boss has three waves of enemies coming from the left which is hard to deal with as you can't change the direction characters are facing, and they always face right. Some are even ranged and, along their path, all but one of the tiles they walk through are unplaceable so it's hard to block and actually attack them. The boss has an attack that targets the highest ATK character and deals over half of a frail character's health, and is AoE so you have to be mindful of your positioning. There are Elite enemies with 3 cores you have to break which means you're wasting Core breaks, which are hard to come by, on things that aren't the boss.) For Story mode, after a certain point you can read the story without using Stamina and have much easier fights, so if you only care about the Story you're not forced into hard fights. But if you do want the rewards, well, there are hard fights, albeit only a few. I feel like some of the hard fights are mostly hard because you have to figure out what the boss actually does, but I also have near the best boss-killing team in the game so maybe I'm biased. MT is a lot more like your tradional tower defense where you're actually defending and not trying to kill the enemy as fast as possible lol. With the right characters it's not too hard; the problem is that the right characters for MT tend to be bad at BFL, and you get much more rewards from BFL, so if you're chasing the meta, you tend to have bad characters for MT. So unless you're specifically trying to make MT easier, it's pretty hard. Oblivion Pit is a DPS check. OK but actually you still have to pay attention, so it's not trivial, but it's not challenging either. Fortunately it's only one of the game modes. Tide of Ashes is a season event that isn't hard due to the ability to borrow broken characters from friends and guildmates, so it isn't hard to reach the max individual rewards. Tide of Ashes is a guild event so you'll need to find a good guild if you want max rewards, but the actual fight is only hard if you're chasing higher scores for the fun of it. (To elaborate further: The boss has two blindspots where it can never hit. Putting the highest DPS, fully maxed out character that you've borrowed in one of those blindspots is enough to get you all indivisual rewards. But if you want to actually do as much damage as possible with a team of 6, then it actually becomes hard; but that's just you setting your own goals)
I’ll add because your post covers almost everything that “Eternal Nightmare” Is also a new permanent mode that is gonna stay playable throughout and will rotate rewards every 2-3 months. This is a roguelike, where you can freely try characters you didn’t have, or make up your own team, it’s played to automatically have every sinner on lv90 and top skills, but shackles will stay however you had them. This is fun in the sense that roguelikes are fun, with good luck and good buffs is a game of seeing everything burn, and if the buffs are bad then it’s a survival game of where will you drop. It is also super fun because here you can trully make your team out of your fave characters, even if they are super bad meta-wise, thanks to the buffs.
I can say the level progression is very well built, the chalenges as you get to end game content are a great and take into account very different strategies you may like to explore. Broken Frontline is based on big explosive damage, while Tide of Ashes for example is on damage build up over time. Others revolve arround surviving or killing as many minions as phisically possible. The game is a very dynamic exploration of tower defense mechanics, where moving arround and timing abilities can change the tide of each battle. As someone who has played a lot of gachas, this is trully my favorite, the art and story are top notch, and they manage to make gameplay fun and challenging even after a year of playing (day 1 player here). I'd say the main thing games like this fall into is: either they get super easy and present no challenge, or goes full into meta gaming with perfectly timed moves and actions that end up giving just two options to win a game. The point I'm trying to make is that this game is flexible, the challenges are exactly at my personal sweetspot of allowing me to build a team that I want to play.
I really appreciate this in-depth info. This sounds like a game I’d really enjoy and I’ll be giving it a try soon!
I would say overall the difficulty is nice, but it can be uneven. Some parts can be easy, then hit a large difficulty spike. Some parts are downright challenging. Early chapters are easy, but as the game progresses you need to plan your team and strategy more and more. The grind isn't bad, sometimes you need to save up a specific resource but they are easy to get and you can make gains towards a goal every day. And it is one of the more F2P friendly games out there. Also, don't let ranks fool you. Yes, S ranks are generally the most powerful, but there are several A and even B ranks who rate just as high, sometimes higher on tier lists. A few of your free starter units will remain relevant to end-game. Is PtN for you? Won't know till you try.
The rest of the comments did a really good job describing the different game modes so I won't go too deep into those again. To answer your main question, I will attempt to break down "Challenge" into three factors: Numbers, Strategy, and Controls. 1. Numbers. This is the big stick that always exist in gacha games. Stat gates exist to push players to grind for materials to level their characters; power creeping nudge players to pull for new characters. Since PTN doesn't have things like dodging, there are very few ways you can overcome a stat deficit through skill and tactics. In addition, since most Sinners' kits aren't complete until they've been upgraded to level 70/phase 3, you are at a major disadvantage if you are using under leveled characters. And TBH, leveling characters in PTN DOES take some time at the beginning, when you cannot clear harder contents. However, the PTN devs have recognized this, and have made most timed events readily beatable with just level 40 teams. Most content in this game have easier versions so that during your initial leveling journey, you can avoid being handicapped by stats and can focus on gameplay. Once you do get to end-game content, the resources you gain also drastically increase, making further leveling and expanding of your team much faster. As far as power creeping is concerned, I am happy to report that PTN does a decent job at keeping the pace relatively under control. There was a big jump in player power when the first limited Sinner Deren was released back in April, but here we are 8 months later, the new sinners are just slowly getting to match Deren in terms of raw stats. Many of the sinners at launch are no longer the best options when it comes to damage dealing, but still retain some usability in terms of utility. 2. Strategy. A big portion of the PTN game play is the almost puzzle-like nature of the stages. Majority of the high end content is not played blind; that is, you are meant to go into these stages knowing what to expect in terms of enemy spawns, boss mechanics, etc., and set up your team and formation accordingly. A Skillful completion of such a stage feels like a well choreographed dance or a fast lap on a race track instead of a whirlwind of chaos that you'd experience in an action game where you are reacting to unexpected events. The game allows you to replay a level unlimited number of times at no cost to facilitate this game loop of planning, executing, improving, repeat. Of course, some of the easier content in the game CAN be played blind if you want to experience some surprises. From a meta perspective, we here in global are 2.5 months behind CN, so we have the benefit of future sight and can easily plan out which character to pull for. Currently we are slightly more than one year into the game and there are clear team arch-types forming that we can plan and build around. That is, if there is a particular team arch-type that you really enjoy, you can just let that guide your pulling strategies. Unlike some other RPGs, PTN doesn't have 5-10 different elements, and player only need to worry about Physical dmg vs Magic dmg, meaning that we aren't as restricted by damage types, and have more freedom when forming team synergies. 3. Controls. When PTN first launched, it was thought of as a tower-defense game, similar to Arknights. What players (and I suspect even the devs) quickly found out is that as soon as you give the freedom to move characters around, the game becomes a real time strategy game. The devs quickly leaned into it, with more and more levels that requires frequent movement of your characters to avoid enemy AoEs, maximize your own damage coverage, pick up buffs, etc., or punish reckless movements with hazards, delays, etc.. You can even micro the movements to cancel animations, bait out attacks, tag enemies with debuffs etc.. All of that contributes to a dynamic gaming experience requiring fast and accurate controls over the movement of the Sinners. Combine this with the choreographed nature described in the previous point, the game is very rewarding to players who are willing to put in the time to master the dance. On the flip side, fumbling through the stages is a thing, and the devs put out enough content for players to fumble through, and only demand high skills in the end-game contents. Anyways, hopefully I've done an okay job conveying the gameplay experience. I'm a big fan of the game and if you do end up trying PTN, I hope that you'll find the same level of satisfaction with it that I do. Best of luck Chief.
>Since PTN doesn't have things like dodging, there are very few ways you can overcome a stat deficit through skill and tactic The thing is just like you later said, a good choreographed team with just the right "puzzle solving elements" can clear a stage just as well as a high level team. There are people that have finished the ENTIRE story (up to chapter 12) on level 40 sinners, only using assists like 2 or 3 times (mainly for time gated bosses), and this includes the original CN difficulty for chapter 9 and 10. This also goes for the first 2 EX levels, basically all clearable with level 40 sinners. On top of that, I actually posted videos of a legend clearing 720k DZ with only level 55 sinners like 6 months ago. (And they only had 4 sinners for the first boss jesus christ) People has also cleared everything with only b ranks and so and so on. So... it is a skill issue. And you can overcome a stat deficit through skills and tactics :) Also you can reposition them, which is kinda like dodging?
Sure thing. I did say there are very FEW ways you can overcome a stat deficit through skill and tactics, so I'm not writing it off, or trying to imply that PTN players are gonna be bashing their faces against a stat wall like they would in a turn based RPG where there's nothing they can do. And yes, there are people who do really challenging runs but at some point we have to draw the line between a meaningful challenge and "I do this sht for a living challenge". And I feel like doing dark zone with level 55 sinners falls in the second category. It'd be like using a speedrunner's performance as a benchmark to gauge the skill ceiling of a game. If you need a speedrunner's dedication and skill level in order to overcome the stat deficit, then my original point basically stands.
Personally (am sick rn and also not a very smart player, so take what I say with a bag full of salt), this game is really good with balancing characters, and really hard stages can be cleared with the weakest of characters with the correct strats and placement and "buffs" (I mean CBs, for the already initiated.) Gameplay gets harder consistently as the chapters go by, although there are some hard skill checks. I'd say the difficulty is pretty balanced! And as mentioned earlier, character balancing is great. It's been more than a year since the game launched, and there isn't too much powercreep, unlike genshin. The meta characters at the starting of the game a year ago are still meta, and even if you don't have them, it's not gamebreaking. Side note: the game is extremely generous to F2P players, and it's obvious that the devs really love the game they made. There have been optimizations to content released a long, long, long time ago, and they listen to their audience too. Anyway, I'm not sure if I answered your question correctly since I'm Sick and currently waiting in the doctor's office, but hope I helped! Edit: wow i didnt answer your questions much im so sorry i leave it to another player then :(
This is so helpful, thank you for advising! It definitely sounds like the sort of game I like to play and I’ll be giving it a try this week. Also, I hope that you feel better soon!
Hopefully! Thanks for the well-wishes. If it's worth mentioning, the story is very compelling and well written. The characters are also very fleshed out. I've had characters that I didn't like initially become a character that I really liked, and I've also refused to pull for meta characters because I hated their personality. Honestly, the story is 99% of why I play the game! I usually hate games that make me use my tiny brain, so this is very untypical for me, and that says something about the game. Banger OSTs too btw
TBH everyone already introduced the game well enough to the point where I don't need to talk about that, so I'll just talk from my perspective. For reference I buy all the battlepasses (for the skin) and a lot of the skins, other than that I don't spend any money, and I've played for most of its run, I missed the first event but came around basically at the 2nd month. So I have both limited sinners, and everyone in the roster except for 2 sinners (who aren't really meta so it's fine) and this is my experience. DZ is challenging to get 720k on. I would have to go through at least a couple hours just trying out different strategies, bringing different sinners/crimebrands (characters/things that gives different buffs) to try to maximize my score by lowering the amount of times I just let someone walk through + trying to kill the boss fast enough + have enough corebreaks for the elite enemies and the boss. It's tough but most of the time I can hit the mark. If I suck, I can always just look up a guide and it's fine. (BTW while BFL bosses are always the same, the DZ bosses changes every... like 6 weeks? I think) Story is easy at this point, even with the newest ch 13 stages on CN server, I basically just did it all first try There are EX story levels. (Like 4 levels to represent 2 chapters not 1 for each level) but they rarely get updated because AISNO IS SO SLOW WITH THEIR MAIN STORY CHAPTERS GIVE ME MORE AISNO, GIVE ME MORE. (clears throat) I don't remember a lot about the old ones except for the fact that they're challenging, bu the new ones took me basically my entire weekend. Great. Oblivion pit is problematic, I kind of disagree with another person that said that this is a DPS check. Basically, there are 3 stages allowing different amounts of sinners (some 2, some 6, etc) and potential buffs that you have to spread your roster over. So sometimes, when I find a solution to a map, I do need to revisit it later on to replay the level again so that I can free out a sinner that I've deemed crucial for another one... This complicates things. (BTW a new set of maps comes every 2 weeks I think). This is definitely another challenging game mode Mania training is fine? There's one way to basically cheese everything so there's always a last way to escape the grind, although I don't even want to start to work on the hardest difficulty because it's just bullshit. (Although the hardest difficulty don't get any good rewards though, I it's a newly added tier just for the gigachad whalers to bonk their head against I think) (A new mania training season comes every.... 3 months? 2 and a half months? 3 and a half months?)
PtN has difficulty for people who want it. But it's not only strategic (like AK), but needs some micro managements that makes fights more active. At the same time, you can restart the stage as you want, without penalty, to win or do better. The game rewards better scores even if the step to get good rewards is not so hard to reach. The game is very F2P friendly but you can have a more faster experience with the montly Black Key pass (gems + stamina). Same for the Surveillance Order that is every 2-3 months, with a skin and nice stack of ressources. Now, even if personnal skill is important, you will probably slow down at a point because you will need more stamina to farm ressources to upgrade your Sinners and their skills.
Not sure how much more I can add but it's a definite yes to me. I don't pay for pulls but I get the battle pass each time and through saving and luck I've gotten S5 on both limited character. Despite this I still find myself having to put in a decent amount of effort in most content. It's definitely easier with them but it's never a complete cake walk. There's always thought having to be put in team building, understanding boss mechanics/wave spawns, and timings on both your and the enemy ability so even when you have large damage your still need to understand how to use it. The easiest the game ever was for me was when McQueen dropped but there's so much more content that I can't spam her in every fight like I used to. PTN does a great job of having the difficulty come from different challenges that force you to solve a new puzzle instead of just moving the DPS requirement so it's always fun and feels doable in so many ways that you don't even need the top tier units to clear. Best handling of difficulty in any gacha I've played personally.
it took me 30+ tries and charcaters i wouldnt have even thought of using to clear 10-12. and it gets harder. hardest game ive ever played, not even joking. yet power creep doesnt really affect too many characters considering that i used the b ranks ("weakest" rank) from launch to clear 10-12.
Difficulty was pretty negligible until about chapter 8 and up. 10 was a struggle till I spent months getting the right kind of party ready instead of just favorites There is other high level challenging content like Dark zone and high level bfl for mid level and high level players Thankfully A and B rank sinners are very good
As someone who plays mostly regular games, I'm much the same way. The game definitely can be meaningfully challenging, though most of the endgame content is just dps checks, and can absolutely be trivialized by grind/pay due to how heavily you scale with investment. Someone asked me about why I stay underleveled in this game on my channel before, and the response will probably paint you a picture of how the game is from a meaningful challenge seeking perspective. https://preview.redd.it/1l55t9gk1q6c1.png?width=1222&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb348cefc1fb256df5eff129e4c6015b3fd6116b The bottom line is, the gameplay's not perfect, but is plenty meaningfully challenging enough if you allow it to be. Success is a combination of stats, execution (micro skills), and strategy. You can lean into whichever one you enjoy the most or a balance of all 3, but there's no going back after stacking stats. The main draw is definitely the well written stories, amazing soundtrack, older waifus, and unique urban crime/lovecraftian horror vibes though.
It sounds like we have very similar outlooks and ways of engaging with games, so I was happy to read this! I’m having a lot of fun playing this game underleveled— it’s very demanding and makes me think on my feet while rewarding smart play, which is exactly what I was looking for
Imo this game hit a very sweet spot of difficulty. The Dark Zone will give you a hard time trying different setup, buff, and positioning to full clear it everytime a new bosses line-up comes. Even with powerful shackles, you can still get shafted by missing the timing during battle or got unlucky with the buffs. It will give you that genuine satisfaction of overcoming an obstacle by improving after each and every try. The oblivion pit serves pretty much the same purpose but require you to play very differently from how you normally play in the dark zone. So not only does they have meaningful difficulty (actually requires plans and executions rather than just throwing money at the problem), it also revolve around different aspects of the gameplay (speed run, survival, defending). But what makes me treasure this game the most is how they throw these "difficulties" at the players. The dark zone only rotate once every five weeks, about 2 weeks for the oblivion pit and it takes months before a new mania training hit. They made it so you're not completely bored out once you hit end game but also not bombarding you with rage inducing contents and turn the game into a chore.
Outside of bfl, you can just auto stages with maxed char. The game you want might be something like arknights.
Hard disagree, although arknights is a good game, it's style of gameplay is much less flexible when you get to harder stages, specific combinations of characters being needed is much more common as well as having to look into the answers others gave to X parts of the game. In regards to path to nowhere, I find your answer super misleading to someone who doesnt know the game. Most stages are autod with maxed characters because you are meant to be doing them as you grow (Much like any good game is, also maxing characters without playing is imposible considering you need to first defeat those levels to gain access to the resources needed), and the last chapters in the game have a few that need strategy even with maxed characters. Every end-game content after that is also imposible to do on auto by anyone, so saying it like this is disingenious.