Best Difficulty Setting for Final Fantasy Resonance
The exact differences between all three difficulties and the best one for you in Final Fantasy Resonance.
Final Fantasy Resonance has three difficulty settings to choose from: Casual, Normal, and Expert. Each offers a different level of challenge, but your choice also affects how quickly you can upgrade your Visions Here’s how each setting works in Final Fantasy Resonance, and which one we recommend for your first playthrough.
All Difficulty Settings in Final Fantasy Resonance
There are three difficulty settings in Final Fantasy Resonance, and each one affects enemy health, damage, agility, and how difficult it is to stagger them.
| Difficulty Setting | Description | MRP Earned |
|---|---|---|
| Casual | Enemies have less health, deal less damage, and are easier to stagger. | 100% |
| Normal | The standard difficulty with balanced enemy health, damage, and stagger resistance. | 100% |
| Expert | Enemies have more health, deal more damage, act faster, and are harder to stagger. | 150% |
Expert is the only difficulty setting that increases Mastery Rank Points (MRP), which are required to level up your Visions and unlock new abilities and bonuses.
However, difficulty does not affect the amount of EXP or Gil you earn from encounters. You’ll receive the same amount on Casual, Normal, and Expert, so there’s no real benefit to playing on a higher difficulty unless you’re exclusively trying to farm MRP.
For a better understanding of how much harder Expert actually is, here are the differences compared to Normal.
| Combat modifier | Casual | Normal | Expert |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enemy HP | 60% | 100% | 160% |
| Enemy Stagger Gauge | 40% | 100% | 160% |
| Damage Received | 60% | 100% | 140% |
| Damage Dealt | 110% | 100% | 80% |
| Enemy Agility | 60% | 100% | 140% |
| MRP Earned | 100% | 100% | 150% |
Expert makes the enemies hit harder, and have more HP, while you deal less damage against them. This makes boss fights take much longer, especially before you’ve unlocked stronger Visions and attacks.
Which Difficulty Should You Choose in Final Fantasy Resonance?
We recommend starting Final Fantasy Resonance on Normal, which seems to be the intended experience, as it offers a decent challenge without making every regular encounter drag on unnecessarily.
Normal still requires you to engage with all of the game’s combat systems, exploit enemy weaknesses, upgrade your equipment, and use your Visions properly. Enemies are still dangerous and being careless will have you lose battles or take a lot of damage.
Trying to rush the game on Normal will leave you underpowered. Some bosses can be quite challenging even on Normal, but you can overcome them with better preparations or a few extra levels. The game also throws over-leveled bosses at you, so you won’t be wanting for tougher content too often.
Casual is perfectly fine if you’re only interested in the story or want to explore without spending too much time fighting regular enemies, which there is a lot of in this game. Since you earn the same EXP and Gil as Normal, there’s no progression penalty for choosing it. In fact, you can swap between Normal and Casual freely depending on how you want your gameplay session to feel.
Expert is best suited for players who want a more harcore experience. The 50% MRP bonus is appealing, but the increased enemy health and stagger resistance makes farming less efficient as it makes encounters last longer.
How to Change Difficulty in Final Fantasy Resonance
You can change your difficulty at any point outside combat and certain story sequences, without restarting your playthrough.
- Open the System Menu.
- Select Options.
- Open the Gameplay settings.
- Find Difficulty and choose Casual, Normal, or Expert.
- Apply your changes.
There are no penalties for changing the difficulty, and it doesn’t affect achievements or trophies either. You can complete everything on Casual if you prefer.
This also means you can freely switch to Expert while farming MRP, return to Normal for exploration, and drop to Casual if an annoying boss or specific area is giving you trouble.
For most players, Normal will be the ideal starting point and intended experience, but you should feel free to experiment and swap around between Expert and Casual depending on your own preferences.
If you’re just starting out Final Fantasy Resonance, make sure to check out our Chapter 1 checklist where we go over everything you can and should collect and defeat in Chapter 1.
