Stranger of Paradise DLC is locked behind the hardest difficulty level

gamesradar.com:

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin's first DLC, Trials of the Dragon King, has just launched, and chaos has ensued as players have discovered that the new content can only be played on a newly-introduced difficulty mode harder than anything in the original game.

The base game offers four difficulty levels, including a story mode that's intended to let players "breeze through battles," and an optional casual mode toggle that does things like automatically reviving fallen party members and letting you block unblockable attacks. The difficulty tops out with chaos mode, which is intended as a post-game challenge you can only unlock by beating the main story.

The Trials of the Dragon King DLC introduces a new difficulty level called Bahamut, which is even tougher than chaos mode. Playing old missions on this new difficulty lets you get a currency which you need to use to unlock the DLC's handful of new stages. Since the Bahamut difficulty also ups the maximum gear level, it seems the new content is intended to give players who have exhausted the original game something fresh to do as they grind - but the decision is leaving behind Final Fantasy fans who are just in it for the story.

"I really hope they change this soon," Reddit user Baithin (opens in new tab) writes. "And I don’t want to just hear people say 'get good,' because that isn’t an option for anyone who is disabled or just doesn’t have the skill, desire, or the time to grind the hardest content. I just want to casually enjoy the story and have fun killing things." Even more experienced players, who've gone through the difficulty grind to get the game's highest-level gear, are finding the new addition frustrating (opens in new tab).

The devs do have one olive