I'm a little surprised that an entire video game "world" can be made of a place that didn't take more than the majority of 11 minutes and one "enemy encounter" (and some bagel sandwiches) to finish exploring... and then sinking (hey, that spoiler already had its band-aid ripped off the moment we warped in here!), but I guess it does stand to reason there were significantly more floors below than needed to be visited at the time... and drastically changing the layout of the ruins probably helps in extending its general spelunkability...
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Sunken Sea Spire
Stage 4-2:
Yes, Steven. This place looks nice. This place, which was a ruins before you further ruined it. Try not to feel too bad OR good about it, honestly.
I'd been giving it a lot of thought... I really don't use the full variety of the team's moves very much. I mean, obviously not everything can be equally important... basic attacks will obviously be the real staple no matter how you slice it, and a lot of that is exacerbated by how Diamond Mode requires a greater emphasis on raw economy of action, particularly the efficiency of the moves you choose... because leaving opposition alive and healthy enough to retaliate for too long is a sure way to get poofed.
I think besides that, however, the regular non-Diamond Mode gameplay also lends itself to a sort of "comfort zone" wherein you don't NEED to do anything special, perhaps even more than what we've seen here. I certainly didn't rely on Purple Puma or Holo Pearl nearly as often along the way as I did along the way. So I look once again at those moves that I've been neglecting even more.
Moves like Rocket Punch! I think the cost to use it just scares me away more easily than I care to admit... but it's a VERY powerful move. If you can aim it. On my initial playthrough of the game, when it was still new... when there WAS no Diamond Mode... when Garnet's poofed sprites were still monochrome... I had not-so-great spikes of input delay, making it unreasonable to use. Heck, given how important Shield Breaker is, I'm surprised that I made it through the game, pre-hard-mode or otherwise! I mean, there's still a little bit of that here... but it's sufficiently less that it's not a crazy gamble. And (non-)gambles do pay off, as it turns out. "Bang."
It's still not feasible to use all moves all the time... and I'm pretty sure Garnet's six-hit combo attack won't get a lot of play unless I just want to hear her say "So be it!" for the feels. (Inside fan moment, not STRICTLY important, but the game's full of those... and that simple tiny clip is enough to provide chills, it's so effectively-laid. But the amount of attention to detail for what could've been a simple cash-in tie-in MOBILE GAME of all things is part of what makes Attack the Light so great!)
I'd like to introduce... the enemy that is, for my money, at least... the most dangerous one in the whole game. Sea stars! You know they're serious, because they've adopted the series's signature star motif. They know too much! They FIRE stars at you! ...the problem is that they fire THREE of them. At a delay. Before they zoom right at you. It's pretty hard to intuitively know when to block the first one, but at least the other two in a barrage will be in proper tempo with the sound effects that spawned them. So, multi-hit. Awkward timing. Could show up as part of a group. Like these three here! That's... a lot of potential pressure for any one member of the team.
Now imagine if they were super-sized. Or in an ambush. Because you know they will be at some point. Now I'm pretty thankful all the other enemies we've seen here have had some crippling flaw in their strategy, even if they're not especially weak opponents as it is already.
We also get to see a little anglerfish light creature... ho-hum... wait, what? Did it just BUBBLE an enemy?! Not cool! That's infringement! ...well, at least we're pretty well-versed in the meta strategy of bubbles by now, and it uses up that enemy's turn to set one up, unlike how our moves work per turn. It's actually way more devastating for it to suddenly, but lazily bump into a gem, causing potentially massive damage if you're not ready for the timing.
Other than that, it's just their general beefiness that can be a problem... it's hard to want to commit at least two turns' worth of Star Points to taking out an enemy that MIGHT waste its time not-attacking... but also making it slightly more annoying to attack any other enemy at random, so... toss-up!
Thankfully, the game will now inform you as part of your completion rate that you missed something if there's a badge or a Red Gemstone in a shop... especially since we've got one of the more significant badges in the game, finally. Mostly because Pearl can't do poison for some reason, but it'd be redundant for anyone to ALSO inflict it on top of Amethyst's Lucky Flame Badge... so the Lucky Poison Badge really DOES diversify the added damage quite a bit, actually.