ZOMBERO'S PROFILE

//He uses his Force spell and hits my mage, silences him. No chance of recovery from it, nothing I can do.//

It's panic, you can use a tranquilizer to recover from panic.

//First turn, he attacks normally and lands a crit, one shots a character. Technically recoverable, but not worth the effort.//

Even with a crit, I'm surprised he could pull that off. Does this character have low pdef and HP?

//I see that I have to kill him before he does this, but I can't even see how close I'm getting.//

You do have to kill him before he does that, yes. And I do want to give enemies life bars in the future to inform situations like these.

//How else should I prepare?//

Well, without seeing your team, I can't really answer that. You'll wanna use all the buffs and debuffs available (Weak, Slow, Tender, and Shield, along with appropriate elemental barriers), and of course you'll wanna be using top tier attacks, equipment, and souls. Make efficient use of Impulses, consider that Guard removes your elemental weakness for that round when defending against Kerberos' breaths. If you have any characters who are prone to dying, consider tankier EQ on them, but just as importantly, if you have any chars who tend not to come close to dying (until after turn 13) consider more offensive EQ for them. Also ensure that the souls and EQ you have on are well-suited to the damage type you are using (physical/magical).

author=EdgeOfChaos
I'm going to guess the final boss is the High Templar.

Well, the game still isn't finished, so no ~final~ boss yet. But the game is about twice as long as before with a second full-fledged boss.

Aha, well, Kerberos isn't the end of the game anymore. ;)

Part 3 was much improved! A couple needed changes I noted from the playthrough thusfar: Panic shouldn't prevent Impulses, particularly not if I'm going to call them "Panic" and "Impulses", and the dialogue with Claire needs to be changed to a monologue. There was a time when it was unclear if the protagonist was going to be silent, but at this point I'm pretty certain that I don't intend to give him a narrative personality. For that matter, I should give an option to pick a female protagonist.

Thanks for the pretty accurate review!

I do realize that the luck basis is an issue, and have plans for addressing it. This will most likely come in the form of giving the player stronger rallies sooner. For instance, moving the Tranquility rally, which resists ailments, to near the start of the game, and giving it the property of nullifying the first ailment attempt against each party member that round. As is, rallies tend to not see much use until halfway through the current game.

RPGs in general tend to need pruning to produce entertaining LPs, and SS exacerbates this by being grindier than most. On the other hand, the fairly persistent threat of normal battles might make them more interesting to watch than in most RPGs. It would probably require some discretion to decide what to cut.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Also: Can you do anything with souls other than equip/shatter?

Later on in the game, souls are used to synthesize equipment. Other than this, no.