Insane Difficulty: Xenogears - HardType v4.1 - Insane Difficulty

Beginning, Mountain Trail leading to Uzuki's house - Was getting my tail kicked in the first dungeon, though that could have easily been the fact I felt like challenging Lil' Kobolds outside the dungeon as a fresh level 1 Fei throwing me off my game. I don't think anything needs to be changed with regards to the mountain pass hp wise. Maybe just need to nerf the wolf's attack a tiny bit, perhaps 2 points? Not sure if you were expecting people to grind a bit before passing through here.

Blackmoon Forest - No complaints here. Seems well balanced.

Desert outside of Dazil - Yikes, those Sand Sharks do not mess around, heh. Luckily the sand people or whatever the hell they're called were more easily handled as long as I started each fight at full health or nearly full health. Don't think anything needs to be changed here.

Worm boss fight in the desert - Hoo boy, this is where I got a couple game overs, mainly because I'm a dingbat that felt like charging into the Worm fight with entirely the wrong approach and running out of fuel, then out of health shortly afterwards. Once I realized I should stick to Guided Shot spam and refill ep with Rosesols, it wasn't too bad.

I am curious though if the Worm and the previous mechs are doing a bit too much damage. It's entirely possible to lose if they keep spamming their strongest attacks (the punches from the mechs in the first fight, Worm's double strike that does 400+ damage if both hits connect). I can imagine how hard it is to balance early game gear fights when no frame hp recovery parts aren't accessible until Nortune IIRC. Would need more opinions on this one, but I'd suspect a minor nerf to either Worm's attack power, the previous gears attack power, or perhaps a combination of the two might be needed, who knows.

Aveh Cruiser & Brigandier - The former wasn't too bad...until I felt like trying to kill the enemy group guarding a Leather Vest chest. How I won that on my 2nd attempt at the fight, I don't know, heh. Those guards on the front row randomly doing a 60+ damage gunshot were a riot, heh. It's a fixed fight there though so I don't think it necessarily has to be changed, especially considering the fact that, by the time the next character dungeon comes around, Leather Vests are buyable if memory serves me right. Don't think anything needs to be changed here. Was about lv12 Fei and lv9 Citan starting this section.

As for Brigandier, Wild Smile was an annoying move as it could cut into my damage output due to forcing me to resort to 10 or 20 fuel attacks if I didn't want my overall damage inbetween level 1 deathblows to suffer. Ended the fight with Weltall around 600-ish hp and ~450 fuel left...and that's with a Reppu missing thanks to being under the effects of Wild Smile.

Not sure if its normal attack into a Chain Whip turns are fixed or not. As it stands, I think the fight is fine, though there's also the consideration you may have to do the first section of the Stalactite Cave with a weakened Weltall. Not that it's a huge issue though.

Stalactite Cavern - Not too bad in terms of normal enemies. Made for a good chance to grind up levels & deathblows at least.

Calamity though? Hoo boy this one took some thought to get past. Lost once before my strategy came about.

Basically, I opened with Wild Smile from Brigandier while Weltall boosted, then alternated between triangle attacks and Reppu. Brigandier joined in the festivities on the next turn by boosting, then also going to triangle attacks and Beat Serpent spam.

When both got around 150-200 fuel, I shut off boosters and hoped I could take the boss down from there before eating too many missiles.

Speaking of that...I feel Calamity should get an hp nerf or a nerf to how much damage those missiles do (Maybe both? That'd be a bit extreme though and I don't think it's absolutely necessary. Missiles doing ~650-700 damage when I have no way to heal and seems to be completely random on if it'll use it or not makes for a bit of a silly fight.

As for my reasoning for the hp nerf...even with shutting off boosters at 150-200 fuel remaining, I still had to utilize the charge command to scrounge up enough fuel to do a few more triangle & lv1 deathblow combos to finish the critter off. Then again, as I probably mentioned before, it can be rather hard to balance gear fights early on without access to Frame HP recovery parts (or even various Charger parts that increase the fuel you get from charging).

Gebler Fail Squad, first round - Not too bad really. Held back on using boosters until I hit the final boss in the sequence, then fired them up (Brigandier used Wild Smile of course to reduce the frequency of the physicals connecting). X attacks (scaled back to triangle attacks when fuel got around 300-350 for each gear) & lv1 deathblows put that boss down quickly. Hell, I think one physical got through for damage from that final boss. That's it, heh.

I felt the beginning with just Fei was a little rough. Pretty much any battle that wasn't 2 hobs had me considering just running right away. The only reward being xp for a fight vs xp + high chance of a healing item made that a pretty clear decision until I hit 5 and had Fei's first combo which came in the black forest.

So I get to the black forest and low and behold the 4 wolf fight kicks my ass repeatedly unless I get lucky with Fei dodging/blocking most of the attacks being the only way I can really survive without drowing myself in aquasols. I go up to the Elli scene at 5, and almost make it through twice in which i think that if I level up maybe once more for some more health I'd live much easier. I get to 6 and even without starting the fight at full hp manage to get a little bit lucky with dodges and make it through.

Lizard fight was easy, no problem. Worm fight was easy, no problems. (Don't know if luck or what, just had literally zero issues with either fight.)

The desert sharks hurt ALOT, forget exactly what level I was at, but each fight was "please don't kill me right away" and getting somewhat lucky I guess with them obliging 99% of the time. The prison ship sucked, absolutely sucked. If there were 4 regular soliders and they chose to throw grenades or shoot in specific patterns, I would die as soon as the first fire from the ship happened. Had to save scum a little to get both chests, as you can kinda sorta dodge the fights with 6/8? soldiers in which I simply could not survive the onslaught + the ships fire.

Brigandier wasn't too hard a fight. It felt...almost perfect. A few more misses on him and I would've died, a few more hits/combos and I would've died. If anything went slightly wrong or streaky then I probably would've died. I believe I came out of the fight with ~400 hp and pretty low fuel.

So far in the stalactite cave I've had no issues outside of Calamity which I haven't gotten to take another shot at after reading Anima's post to see exactly how he did it. Don't know if I'm 100% feeling it tonight but if I do take a stab at it and pass I will let you know. However I do agree that he either needs an hp nerf (brain is guessing between 1-2k hp maybe a bit less since I don't actually know how close I was coming to killing him), or a damage nerf/bigger miss chance (if there is one even) to his missle barrage.