I actually enjoy having a nice challenge, as long as the difficulty doesn't get to scales of ridiculousness.  I'd expect bosses along the way to pose a challenge and gain steam as they work up to the final boss. If there are side quests for powerful equipments or other hidden "extra" bosses I'd expect them to pose a significant challenge. Otherwise, what's the point? =D If you can't tell, I'm a bit of an old school gamer.

I would enjoy that RPG games could be harder than usual but completely enjoyable. Specially the bosses. It is a pity that some bosses easily get defeated.
Of course, to get difficulty some tries are needed.

As an extension of the original poll: How much grinding is too much? Are you comfortable being required to grind before major bosses?

As an extension of the original poll: How much grinding is too much? Are you comfortable being required to grind before major bosses?

I don't mind at all grinding for a 1 or 2 hours (tops) for bosses. It can be fun if you need money, unlock/find artefacts to shop.

Grinding a bit in each new area is healthy because it makes you notice more the graphics and feel more the game role.
But I think is stupid that between supposedly fast action in history you need to take a lot of time wandering for levelling up. But blocking the way back can be or very demotivating or very enjoyable if you make it in 2/3 tries.

I like the difficulty getting harder progressively and each time a little harder to keep up.

The current model for gameplay balance is such:

 - Random encounters pose no major threats. Very few enemies have instant-death attacks, and there are some with the ability to permenantly drain character statistics. (you have to understand that statistics are dynamically raised and decreased intrinsic to the "level-up" system used in the game; so this is nothing major)

 - Minor bosses probably won't require grinding. Some are based on random encounters that appear later on in the game.

 - There are save-points placed right before many bosses, as well as in dungeons that might be lengthy, or have surprise encounters the party might not be prepared for.

 - Major (story) bosses pose a challenge. It may take several attempts to defeat them and progress onward. Many rely on instant-death attacks.

 - There is an optional boss which will require grinding to maximum statistics, and acquiring rare equipment.

 - There is only one section of the game having missable treasures. It should seem fairly obvious to the player that, once this dungeon is cleared, it can never be returned to. There's otherwise nothing else that would require you to restart your game, in the event that you were aiming for 100% completion.

 - There is a clear understanding of where to go next, as this is always elaborated upon in character interactions. The main story follows a linear path of getting from point A to point B, but players are not (too) restricted from exploring the world in general. There are also side-areas.

 - I included items for emergency situations; such as items that cast spells, (if you run out of spells and need to target an enemy weakness) items that teleport you out of dungeons, items that increase magic resistance and items that can boost your strength.

 - There is a mechanic that allows players to penetrate enemy defenses in dire situations. "Quickening" will occur once your HP falls to critical, and allow your attack to ignore the enemy's defense and resistance. There are some restraints to prevent a quickening from being too powerful, considering that completely ignoring enemy defense allows you to dish out a lot of damage in a single attack. The general idea is that a quickening is a more advanced form of a "critical hit." (but there are still critical hits, as well)

 - There is a mechanic that prioritizes certain abilities over others. If you cast a healing spell, that spell will have a higher initiative than other commands in the battle command queue. (so generally, healing spells are going to occur before anything else) It's usually impossible for characters to be killed before you can even get around to healing them.

Sounds really cool!

...the Legend Armor (most powerful armor)...

I actually only had the palidain armor. 
I used 75 elixirs, 26 Money Commands, and was at lvl99.

Yeah, I think they wanted to have damages go in the thousands, but to display the actual stats they were limited to unsigned integers, so the cap was in fact 255. I don't mind low stats or high stats, except I noticed that in many RPGs, when stats are lower, the MP is horribly balanced to the point where you cast one or two magic and alerady run out of MP .