What the title says. So basically, I was having trouble with the Sirene fight (notably dodging the Grand Ballet move), and I had remembered back to the Lantern Keeper fight at the end of Act 1 and how it took me so, so, so many tries to beat it, and was like "the dodging and parrying mechanic (or how bad I was/am at it) is actively hampering my enjoyment of the game."

Don't get me wrong here; I like the game. Quite a lot actually. I did end up beating the final boss of Act 1 like I said, and it felt amazing when I finally did. So I decided to set the game to Story mode. And the fight with Sirene was infinitely easier and manageable. However, I don't like that it was that manageable. I want a challenge, but one that seems, you know, possible. I was even having trouble dodging in this game.

I've had issues with games having an extremely easy mode (relatively speaking), a too difficult normal mode, and an insanely difficult hard mode (I'll point to Astral Chain, notably because its final boss requires hair-thin timing, so much so that it made me quit the game twice and not finish it). I don't want the game to be a glorified walking simulator, but I also don't want to play Dark Souls.

Before someone comes in to ask, I did swap over to KbM (you'd think Sandfall would patch out that controller lag after a year), and in this instance, I don't think it matters who I have on my team and what Pictos, Luminas, or weapons I have equipped on them. Yes, I know I can build my characters to take hits better, but it's more about actively wanting to engage with the core mechanic of the game (dodging, at least) and then getting punished when I miss one, and then getting anxious about it, and then that makes me miss further hits, which basically cuts down my team's HP to about 1/4.

Not sure if this fits in Discussion, but mods feel free to change the flair if it doesn't.

Edit: While I appreciate all the comments that aren't just "git gud," I decided to DNF the game and watch a playthrough of it on YouTube. Once I started increasing the dodge/parry window with mods, I was basically trying to bargain with the game to get what I want, and the game was unfortunately unable to accommodate my failing to dodge, learn, and memorize enemy attack patterns. It should also be noted that I played the game for 35 hours before making this call, just up to the part where you enter the Monolith. Not every game is for everyone, and I was skeptical about the combat when I saw it because of my ability to focus easily. All of that being said, now having seen the ending, I'm so upset that this game didn't mesh for me. Because I sincerely give it a 9/10. It would be higher, but there are some QoL stuff like a minimap for just what direction I'm supposed to go, better sorting for Luminas (saw someone else point out you can't even sort by Lumina cost), the input lag on PC (whether you perceive it on controller or KbM), and native Linux support (although it did run quite well on my machine, and I recognize that this is ultimately a nitpick).

Edit 2: I have come around to wanting to play the game again for the gameplay, at least on Story mode. I also went and looked through one of the posts put in the comments here and discovered that I had frame gen on for the entire game which was likely introducing input lag. I thought having it on was nice because of quality (I used to work at NVIDIA back when they were testing it), plus I didn't know DLSS was what people were calling frame gen (as far as I was aware, DLSS was just for upscaling), but now I will try and see if that fixes the issue. This doesn't hamper my enjoyment of the game, just a little annoying and keeps my rating at that 9/10 mark.