You're not required to min-max and the actual combat's pretty easy as long as you remember each enemy typically has some sort of weakness to one of the elements/attack types. Honestly I think it's pretty easy even on the hardest difficulty, because while enemies do hit harder - you do too. From the wiki:
If an attack's element is Resisted by the target, it will deal x0.5 damage. If the target is Weak towards that element, the attack will deal x1.4 damage. If the difficulty is set to Merciless, the damage from exploiting weak points will also be tripled in comparison to the normal damage an exploitative attack would deal.
The game's not a chore and if you pick up Royal (instead of base P5R) they went back and improved a lot of the tedious mechanics by adding new things/confidant skills. A good example is they fixed a lot of the tedious travel you had to do in a palace (dungeon) to get places by giving Joker his grappling hook in P5R.
You're not required to min-max and the actual combat's pretty easy as long as you remember each enemy typically has some sort of weakness to one of the elements/attack types. Honestly I think it's pretty easy even on the hardest difficulty, because while enemies do hit harder - you do too. From the wiki:
The game's not a chore and if you pick up Royal (instead of base P5R) they went back and improved a lot of the tedious mechanics by adding new things/confidant skills. A good example is they fixed a lot of the tedious travel you had to do in a palace (dungeon) to get places by giving Joker his grappling hook in P5R.