Dragon Quest 4 - The Royal Crypt decided to be the Liquid Metal Slime Crypt. I think over half the fights had them. Killed five. Game has gotten a bit easier - Zenithian Armour cave got a huge nerf in particular; what happened, Dragon Riders? Although some boss I don't even remember (Sir Roseguardin) gave me quite a scare. Nothing exceptionally good overall, but Thwack was decidedly rude even if he only used it once.
Grandia 3 - Replaying this! I was going to do the ALFINA SCC but it was just not happening. Kornell + Iron Fist + two flunkies = basically impossible, I couldn't even begin to do damage without getting raped. Too bad, game was fun (if very challenging) before then.
So I stepped back from my original challenge and expanded it to female PCs only, which means I get Miranda as well, yay. I'm currently up to Randoto Island. Burn has been a workhorse spell for offence, though Howl started to take over more recently and Crackle was always nice for a bitchslap. Tremor is pretty good for swarms, but not too damaging and kinda slow. Physicals start out awful but have been getting better; Alfina's staff from the casino and Ripple Shot in particular have helped.
Dragonfly Toads - Suck. Kinda dangerous when there are five of them but aside from that they do nothing well.
Gilled Pawns - Bomb is a fast, moderately damaging special attack. Fortunately they don't use it often, and aren't too good otherwise.
Gilled Shamans - Horrible monsters on the SCC, less so with two dudes. Howl ties up and does a large amount of damage, Burn is the same minus tieing up, and they don't fail enough to be one-shotted by Burn or Tremor.
Fake Mushroom - Slightly upgraded Dragonfly Toad. Still fails, and they don't even swarm you!
Gilled General - Grand Slam hurts a fair deal, and is stylish. They have pretty good HP but still get one-shotted by Crackle at least.
Tortogator - After they cast Diggin' they are tough to damage with low-end physical stuff but blow up easily before then to magic (Burn one-shots) and aren't much better afterwards.
Zoea - Very dangerous little buggers; frail but they do pretty solid damage that also cancels and sleeps.
Boat Swallow - These guys stand out because they're a "boss" and I have to kill off Yuki/Alonso against them. They do pretty good damage for such swarms but get almost entirely wiped out by a single Howl.
Fishman - They uh can use Snooze! Otherwise they fail but have enough HP to avoid Burn OHKO.
Fishman Captain - They have the most HP so far, first enemy that reliably avoids a Crackle OHKO. But they aren't really too scary offensively (the Zoeas are still the enemy to fear in this dungeon).
I'm getting a much better sense for speeds and timings of various options this time, which is nice. Game is only playable this way if you know what you're doing, but isn't overly hard - no resets yet though I've come close. Of course this wasn't the hard part of the game normally, so... we'll see.
