Either way, it'll be 17% off on key retailers like every other Steam game, but I sure hope the base price is not 80, because you know it's going to also have paid DLC on top. Nightreign is 40... most co-op games should be in the 40-60 range (20-30 if indie).
@Mimbus: Wait, he erases your party even if they're still alive? Then I feel like that's meant to be some sort of punishment for not using Gommage properly at that point. It's like a race against the clock to see who can erase who first.
I think it makes sense, because Maelle basically has the power of a god at that point in the game, and Simon (with Clea's help) is the only foe who can come close to matching that.
As a side note, I don't know if my strategy works as effectively on the hardest difficulty, as I played on normal. I'd probably agree that you shouldn't be able to cheese him like that on the hardest difficulty.
@Mimbus: I sorta cheesed him without Stendhal, by having Second Chance and Cheater on my three characters, and high Speed pictos so I could rez before getting deleted from the canvas. I built up the Gradient meter until it was maxed, then I made the boss Defenceless and Marked using Monoco. Sciel gave double damage to Maelle and made her play immediately after her. Maelle had Powerful, the attack boosts from having 1 HP, and was in Virtuous state. For fun, I also had Roulette equipped on her, just for even more nuke potential, but I'm not even sure if I rolled half or double when I finally used Gommage, because it dealt 157 million damage and pulverized Simon either way. But it took a few turns to set that up.
I suppose I'm glad the strat I came up with on my own isn't considered OP. I actually hadn't used Sciel's double damage skill once in my entire playthrough before this fight (she was never in my main party), and the Endless Tower was very satisfying for me. I did have a crutch for that which was to apply shields to my team with Monoco, which helped me learn parry timings as a mistake effectively didn't count, but Simon counters shields entirely so I had to switch up my strategy.
During my first Simon attempts, I had to learn how to parry/dodge his attacks because it would have taken about 3 Gommages to bring him down, which takes a lot of turns to set up. At first, my idea was to have Clea's Life on everyone and try to survive his 1 HP thing so my characters would go back to full health automatically on their turn, but one mistake in that instance meant death and he instantly erased my characters from the canvas before I could revive them, so that wasn't going to work for me.
His double attacks were the most fun and unique to this fight, I liked to parry-dodge-parry-dodge those, but yeah I couldn't live long enough to bring him down, until I switched to my single Gommage nuke strat.
@chansaet: That's awesome, although only one of these would've been really new to me but I get it. I played DKC Returns for the first time on 3DS, and I remember the GBA was how I played Mario 2 and Yoshi's Island, so I associate those games with their handheld releases more so than their console releases.
@dushness: I think it's a cost-cutting option for devs/publishers who want to release a "physical" version of their game without the costs that come with it. If Nintendo didn't offer this option, the games would likely be digital-only anyway in most cases.
Meanwhile I bought Expedition 33 for $33... just don't buy a game if it's overpriced, smaller studios will get all the money instead. For me it's going to depend on the competition, if someone offers a unique god-tier experience, then I might be willing to pay the $80, but very few games will be that good.
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