Yeah, with Maria, if you want any sort of challenge you kinda have to force yourself to not abuse some of her moves.

Hence my usual preference to Richter.

Reviving old topics? Never.

Anyways, I finally got this game. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The difficulty was good, end boss gave me a moderate amount of trouble at lvl 36. Funnily enough I got up to him at that level in Albus mode as well. Albus mode was really easy but fun. I loved the music. I'm not sure how I feel about those 'weapon' glyphs. I think I would have preferred magic 'spells' only. What does bug me a little is that it is really easy to get 100% map completion (aside from the large cavern) and that there aren't really that many items for completionists to hunt down. Filling out the bestiary (aside from the monsters in the large cavern) takes little to no time at all. And all the quests (aside from the one about finishing the large cavern) are relatively easy to finish. (Although... farming for damn cashmere threads) Oh well, I guess it's just because after DOS where getting one of every item and soul was a bit of a task requiring several playthroughs, and then again in POR where getting you had all your skills to max out and a bestiary that took much longer to complete that this game just feels really short and after finishing it you aren't really starting to go and get everything, you're just finishing up what you didn't get already just by playing the game. Still, great game. Hopefully we see less copy & paste area wise in the next game and I'm really looking for a castle better than DOS' as it is still my favourite.