Beat this a few weeks ago, thanks to some of the help in this thread. 1000/1000, too!
Every character was maxed on HG and MG with their grenade levels in the 40's or 50's, so everyone was leveled around 250. My weapons weren't ideally configured, but amply accessorized. Doubled up on protective paddings for everyone. Armed like this, I walked through Neverland in one go, all the way through the final boss encounter. I won't spoil the ending there, but I suspect that I could have gone through Neverland with a party under level 200 with a solid strategy.
The narrative had potential, but faltered when the time to deliver the goods arrived. Typical JRPG stories are as piss poor and predictable as a Harlequin romance novel, so Resonance of Fate may very well be
Huckleberry Finn by comparison. And this is from a narrative that is delivered in disjointed bite-sized pieces that aren't terribly relevant to the main story arc for the first half of the game!
The battle mechanics take a while to familiarize with. It took me about fifteen hours to master, but then there was a very linear strategy to follow for the rest of the game. My biggest change was optimizing my equipment loadout for Neverland, and this will be the only change any player needs to make after they understand how to continually execute Tri-attacks. The learning curve of this one strategy is the entirety of the difficulty in Resonance of Fate.
I think this game could have been a lot better if it was condensed into a thirty hour main adventure. Trim any grinding for the main quest, make travel between unlocked hexes quicker, create a more expansive bonus dungeon and iron out an episodic story with zero filler. The spirit of the game would remain intact, and the battle mechanics would never wear out their welcome. Anyone who chose to grind would be given ample opportunity in a Neverland that would rival the main quest in length and difficulty.
Do it, Tri-Ace. You were so close.
