Is the game shifting into fast visual puzzles?

[Enjuden]

I'll be honest, even with ultimate experience, things like the teacups always get me for a while. Eventually I just stop caring and either follow other people or take the hit until I must learn it like in Criterion (?) Dungeons.

The 99 trial I have decided to just stand with the tank since the boss doesn't cleave anyway, and it is significantly easier to see where the fire/wind sword will be. The other swords are frankly irrelevant even in EX so long as you do the right mechanic on the fire/wind one anyway. The lines I do not bother with the ones that have yellow circles since they more often than not get me killed. I only follow the line with the donuts since it tends to be not only safer but let me concentrate on the mechanics coming up.

As for if things will remain the same or change, it really depends on the whims of the team who makes the fights. There are times where they are heavily skewed toward pattern recognition like in every criterion, and other times where you just need to know the puzzles solution and solve it properly. From my experience they usually go back and forth between the two on each patch, and only really deviated from this in Shadowbringers where they stuck with one set of things consistently.