I found this game to be really hard for some reason, especially endgame in the last dungeon, my party was either getting whacked by normal enemies, or the fights were 5 minutes minimum. The difficulty curve went straight up in the last dungeon. One of those curves where the enemies hit 5x harder and got 5x more health than in the previous dungeon. Panzer soldiers were completely trashing my party in the last dungeon, so much that I was just completely discouraged from even continuing the rest of the game, because I knew I would have to farm a ton of rare materials for some weapon crafting, and was hoping to get to end game to do that because it would have been much quicker. If normal enemies give those kinda problems, then I would have never beaten the boss, even if I somehow struggled my way to the end. Been a long time since I had a moment in an RPG. I didn't spent a lot of time farming and doing upgrades and recipes, I more or less just rushed the game through. I had to retry on most of the boss fights, some multiple times. Some of the boss fights I was even convinced it was one of those fights I had to lose, so I just laid the controller down just to find out I actually had to win that lol. This game was a big surprise for me, considering most new gen RPGs are too easy, I personally thought this one was on the other side of the extreme. The boss fights were more like solving a puzzle than a real boss fight, you either had to time an attack at the right time when it exposed a certain part or etc, and you could literally retry 5+ times before you even figure out how to damage a certain boss. I suppose if someone understood exactly how to defeat the boss fights, it wouldn't be that hard, and maybe a guide could spoil this to make the game easier, but I didn't use one.
If anyone is looking for a hard game this is it. I thought it was even harder than Demon's Souls my first time through. I found it also much harder than any of the DQ games, which are known for being more challenging than FF games. SO3 was a pushover compared to SO4, I waltzed right through SO3 no problem, bonus dungeons and all.