What Games Are You Playing 2013?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Every time you explain something that happened in FF13 I don't know who I want to hit more, the people who wrote it or the people who bought it.

[Niu]

Toriyama of course. Square would be a much better company if he is gone.

[Luther Lansfeld]

FF13-2: Just because he succeeds at his plans doesn't mean his motivation is legitimate. He succeeds because he is immortal, not through any clever planning or particular talent for anything besides douchebaggery. His success is just because the game tells us he's successful! I should do the Light/Snow DLC though.

Blue Dragon: Played the first hour of this game on Hard Mode. Pretty fun so far! Shu is an awful character. Holy shit. Nene is awesome though.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Toriyama of course. Square would be a much better company if he is gone.

I suspect more and more that the only thing at Square-Enix that wouldn't improve the company by leaving are the words "Square" and "Final Fantasy."

[Dark Holy Elf]

The Last Story - So I beat this. Surprisingly short game, it only took me 22 hours. Could go a bit further if you did more sidequests (I did a few if they looked plot-promising but by no means all or even a majority).

Anyway, its writing is certainly the reason to play it. It's pretty good on the story front, though certainly could be better. It walks some well-travelled paths certainly but generally walks those paths pretty well. Two of its plot threads are in particular quite interesting: the Zael/Calista romance is pretty solidly done and I liked the somewhat unexpected direction it goes in even if the destination is largely predictable. And the machinations of Count Arganan and Dagran, who are morally questionable but on your "side" and make the dynamics of the game for less black and white. In general the game was at its best when following one of those three characters (Zael excluded, he's always around). Unfortunately I think all get a bit less screentime than I'd like for their stories to be effective. The rest of the cast is okay but generally unspecial, a mix of red herring characters and party members who are decent but won't be entering into the realm of many people's all-time favourites. The story has some weaker points too; Zangurak's a pretty lame villain and I don't think the game sold me on the Gurak perspective of things too well (though it did a good job of showing that the humans weren't exactly paragons either!). The human villains are pretty good though, Jirall's descent into madness was great (this is what happens when you take an already jealous and somewhat unstable individual and throw him in prison for a few months for a crime he didn't commit!) and the fight with him was a great scene as far as music/VA were concerned, while Dagran's just a smooth customer and his villainous motivations are pretty reasonable... just wish he'd had a bit more screentime! I also like how the party dealt with him in the epilogue.

Gameplay's weird. I can't say at the end of the day that it's great, but at least it's different. Kinda surprising that Mistwalker went in this direction for the game. There are shades of FF13 here... it's fast-paced, you only directly control one PC, drawing enemy attention is a key part of the system, you can periodically change your allies' AI... but past that the similarities largely end, the combat is somewhat ARPGish. Sadly the ally control isn't really fast-paced enough to ever be intriguing as such (it takes a while to recharge the command ability) but it is a key part of battles. I kinda liked how the game encouraged you to do damage in unusual ways instead of just rushing up and pounding on something (slash, vertical slice, or chain combo with allies) although sometimes pounding was the only practical way, or one of the others could get repetitive. Overall I was left wanting a lot from the combat, it is a bit unpolished and the inability to control non-Zael characters EVER was annoying. Fights kinda vary, some are interesting certainly but some can't possibly threaten to overwhelm the 5 lives everyone has, which still feels a bit like a hack. For a while I figured the game would be uber-easy but there were a few quite competent fights later on, at least. I actually couldn't beat the final boss at the level I reached him/her, but fortunately the game puts a grind spot near the final save point which lets you level up really fast if you want. Final level was 56->61.

Music's good because Uematsu. Not much more to say.

It's probably the best Mistwalker game though it's very different! Blue Dragon the gameplay game, Lost Odyssey somewhere in between, now Last Story the plot game. 6/10? 7 if I'm feeling very generous. Not as good as Paper Mario which I'm now convinced is a 7.


God Hand HM - Beaten. 460 continues. The real number is higher because I turned off the game a couple times. Fun times, game was very tough throughout, no surprise there. Final boss was good fun, felt a bit more like DMC/Mega Man than the usual God Hand fight (hard to put into words what I mean there... just that there's a very, very heavy emphasis on avoiding each attack correctly I guess, whereas many other bosses you can brute force offensively more), in a good way. And I mean no disrespect to God Hand there! Next playthrough will be Kick Me Sign Normal. One thing about God Hand is that random drops really dictate your level of "free" offence which is huge in getting past any given boss or room. This is both a weakness and strength of the game, but as I get better at the game I'd kinda like to liberate myself from it a bit... no roulette/God Hand probably goes a long way there. Normal Mode because while HM was fun, I am in no way ready for KMS on it, and I really do like the NM fluctuating difficulty.


Valkyria Chronicles 2 - So I started this up. Hmm, interesting setup they have here, politicky alternaty early 20th century Europe, seems kinda cool OH GOD THE ANIME TROPES THEY ARE DIALLED UP TO ELEVEN NOOO. (To be fair I was warned about this.) Too early to say much about gameplay. Or plot even. But yeah.


FF5 4JF - Almost done my Monk/Mystic Knight/Bard/Dragoon playthrough, I'll put together an actual post for that later since this one is already long enough.

[kokushishin]

Thanks to a friend I should have Xenoblade fairly soon.   Never really had much interest in TLS although I watched some friends go through the whole game. They're trying Pandora's Tower now and the camera seems like a major hassle.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning DID sell millions.  That game wasn't what brought 38 Studios down.

It needed to be a blockbuster to cover all of their other deals (like housing for employees that moved) and fund Copernicus.

Apparently something that Catiua-as-Princess gets hyped for is Princess Whim

It's one of the few universal debuff removers, but it's more a perk rather than a feature. Princess is more along the lines of divine beams of doom while wielding Swords of Plot Importance. 

Weapons are fastest (compounded with having more ways to trigger and stacking with augments, ology etc.) while Steal is the slowest.


Mobility is key for 'that one battle' in Diego's quest.   

While admittedly a fuckton more complicated now, Deneb in the original still involved buying Orbs and collecting Glass Pumpkins.

[Clear Tranquil]

Okami HD- Ryoshima Coast. Just lifted the curse zone and exploring now. This game is magic. Sooo much fun!~ I have now found a set of three dogs that jump up into the air on all four paws when Ammy barks at them, I have also fed them so jumping heart dogs~ So unbelievably cute!

[Shale]

Valkyria Chronicles 2 - So I started this up. Hmm, interesting setup they have here, politicky alternaty early 20th century Europe, seems kinda cool OH GOD THE ANIME TROPES THEY ARE DIALLED UP TO ELEVEN NOOO. (To be fair I was warned about this.) Too early to say much about gameplay. Or plot even. But yeah.

Sadly you have already summarized the plot.

[SnowFire]

Overall I was left wanting a lot from the combat, it is a bit unpolished and the inability to control non-Zael characters EVER was annoying.

Hey now, the Metal Gear Calista segment exists, that's kinda like (crossbow-only) combat!

kokushishin: Sure, I knew that, but my point was that if 38 Studios had just made Reckoning and not shoved a giant pile of cash into the money pit that was "let's do a WoW clone without much experience or lots of venture capital", they'd probably have been rather pleased with themselves and had enough money to take a shot at a 2nd game.

Re Deneb: That's not really an excuse!  Despite going to Deneb's shop, I certainly recall never getting a clue that said "sell Glass Pumpkins to me," and if there was one, then FINDING the dang things, and knowing how ridiculously many you need, certainly torpedoes this sidequest idea into the worst-of-all-time category.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, Snowfire, and there are a few more small bits of controlling other PCs, but never more than 2-3 battles and you never get to choose to do so. What's really weird is they made a mechanic of how the player directly controls spellcasting but then never uses it outside like five fights!

[Meeplelard]

BTW, the english release will be a watered down version done by an alternate team, while the original crew will be working on the Japanese retail copy that is the complete version. Don't ask me why Capcom think this is a good idea.

I think you're overstating things a bit.

The core games are the same, and the digital release has a lot of the extras.  The only actual differences are the color editor and the fact that there is no limit on number of a class used at once (normally, there's a limit of two, since there's only 2 colors per class.)

A lot of the other bonus goodies are...special edition release only, and that version costs an equivalent of $126.  Compare that to the release we got which costs only $15.

The reason the game isn't getting a physical release stateside is because for a game like this, there's little market for that.  An "HD" version of an arcade Beat 'em Up is very much the exact game they'd release digital only stateside.    Frankly, Japan gets a lot of Collectors Editions the US never gets, like the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Collectors Set.


It's hardly "Watered down."  Missing two factors that weren't even in the original game?  Maybe (Not saying they're insignificant ones), but you exaggerating the differences here.

[Grefter]

Are these missing thins available as DLC?

If so this is just DLC as ala carte game sales happening again.. I a, okay with this.

[Meeplelard]

No mention of it one way or another, which suggests it's not happening.  I mean, it's not impossible, but I figured something like that would be noted if it was planned for one version and DLC for another.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Yeah, Snowfire, and there are a few more small bits of controlling other PCs, but never more than 2-3 battles and you never get to choose to do so. What's really weird is they made a mechanic of how the player directly controls spellcasting but then never uses it outside like five fights!

In Multiplayer (and I think the arena), you can choose any PC as your main controlled character. So all of them have functioning controls. Why they didn't implement PC -choice- in the maingame is anyone's guess... particularly when you consider how relatively infrequent the segments with -just- Zael are...

Tales of Eternia: Sweet, finally beat this thing! It's actually not as bad as my first impression of the game. It actually does a ton of things right in combat, particularly the multiplayer controls (something that ToE did first, I hadn't realized). The difficulty balance is pretty amazing, too. Lots of standard things are pretty good too. The Craymel Fringing is neat, the encounter rate hits a nice sweet spot, the puzzles are (usually) not very tedious, and the game is shorter than most in the Tales of series so it doesn't wear out its welcome nearly that quickly. Music is nice, too. Melnics is a cool concept, if overall poorly implemented.

However, there's some pretty egregious problems. Namely the painful painful voice-acting, the terrible character designs, the first 2/3s of the plot (I kinda like Shizel as a villain at least), and any of the rest of the villain cast. Chat/Quickie/Meredy are also pretty terrible to varying degrees. Farah, despite my initial loathing, probably ended up the best actually developed character? Yeah, -Farah-.

It's an interesting little bit of mechanical history to the Tales series. And since ToV and ToG are so much fun, I'm glad it happened and that I finally finished it. Not really a recommended part of the series unless you -really- like 2D Tales fighting and have four people to play it together? Still 10000% better than Legendia~

[Grefter]

The real question is A) Did you realise that Meredy has brain damage and B) Keele approval or disapproval?

[Hunter Sopko]

The real question is A) Did you realise that Meredy has brain damage and B) Keele approval or disapproval?

Also that Reid is the only one with common sense.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Meredy was grating and it's clear that there are plot holes galore involving the Melnics translation issue (seriously, how hard is it to keep track of your handwave-y excuses for why people can speak to eachother?).... BUT I genuinely appreciated the attempt of incorporating foreign language into a JRPG for once. And I accept that Meredy's weird speech patterns are totally because she's trying to learn a second language really fucking fast. The Magic Translator Earrings generally work for why the others can speak/understand Melnics, but whenever Meredy talks, I'm assuming she's trying to talk in Inferian, which explains the childlike syntax issues. I know that my second-language skills were pretty basic for a long time, too. It's a nice touch, even if they drop the ball on it a million times.

As for Reid being the only one with common sense... well, it's a valid criticism, but the main villain plot in Eternia isn't really based on common sense, so Reid isn't as effective as Keele's goonlord logic, Farah's insecure need to help literally -everyone-, or Meredy's familial duty to keep driving plot forward. Overall, I found Reid pretty funny, but kinda lackluster as an actual -protagonist-. I like him better in the crossover games where he's not the main character. It helps that he gets a voice actor who knows what inflection is. (Impressive considering he has probably a grand total of 15 voiced lines in Radiant Mythology, but god damn the VA in ToE sucks.)

[Hunter Sopko]

You missed both then, Djinn.

Meredy talks with the same syntax problems -in both languages-. When they get to the other planet, it's pretty clear she's speaking her native language. You see her speak to other members of her race, of which she would have no reason to speak Inferian.

For Reid, it's the sequence of events in the Inferian capital. Reid is the only one to point out that further continuing to convince the powers that be of their mission is a bad idea, but is consistently outvoted at each step by Keele and Farah, despite evidence becoming overwhelmingly on his side.

And yeah, I liked the use of Melnics, despite iffy implementation and balldropping. Actually have a font for it and could read it easily for a while. NERDPOINT: Zenny and I used to have full conversations using the font! LOLOL KILL OURSELVES.

Reid does work in TotW, especially when paired with Arche. Games that use the crossover for comedies are generally good for that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

FF5 Four Job Fiesta 2013 - Finished.

Run this time was Monk, Mystic Knight, Bard, and Dragoon. Quick review time!

Monk: They have lots of HP. Best of anyone, and they get passives that boost it. Barehanded is really good early, both as a passive ability and something they can easily spread to other classes. Falls off as time goes on, beyond some good synergy with Hero's Rime. Counter's also nice. Kick is useful in occasional randoms and against Dragon Pod. Their weaknesses are a lack of variety and being all-around underwhelming later, a lack of evasion for a front-row class, and lack of weapon options (Main Gauche, can't use Spellblade, etc.). Focus is also a nice and rather underrated skill, 2x damage in 1.5x normal time, and also disables Chicken Knife's downside.

Mystic Knight: Heavy fighter class with unusually high speed but unusually low Str/HP by their standards (still good of course). Their skillset... hmm. Obviously needing two turns is a downer. Bad in W1 randoms, but good against most W1 bosses due to hitting weaknesses... those that lack weaknesses though, they are awful against. In W2 they get Break Sword. This move rocks, it does take setup but petrify hits almost everything. Lategame they get Flare Sword which is solid certainly. Their weaknesses are of course the setup time, and the fact that they have a stretch late W2 / early W3 with terrible weapons (no new weapons between Bal and the W3 airship). Having now run both, I can say quite confidently that no, they aren't as good as Time Mage as far as water jobs go, whose skills manhandle boss fights and are at worst comparable against randoms (nothing as fatal as Break Sword, but lots of other tricks).

Bard: MT stop/confuse? Sign me up. Bard is the best class I've ever used on fiesta against randoms, most likely, barring a small number which block both statuses. Then they fail. This sums them up nicely overall until W3 (I could give them Barehanded and put them in the front row, but the durability's ugly). In W3 they gain a great trick for bosses in Hero's Rime, which raises party level. I've never really used it before unlike the status songs. It's actually decently solid, upping all the party's damage considerably. Monk in particular goes kinda crazy, it tops out at like 7k damage. Anyway the class is too bad against bosses for too much of the game (and the problematic HP persists forever) but beyond that they're reasonably solid, OMG a good FF bard.

Dragoon: Third year in a row with these losers. As usual they're a mediocre job which at least has shields. Being the only high-strength class in my team that can actually use knives meant they got spellblade. Daggers for life, yo. So yeah they were the crappy Mystic Knight with a locked secondary pretty much.

Generally speaking, setups were:

Monk + Sing or Focus
Mystic Knight + Focus
Bard + HP+30% (sometimes Barehanded)
Dragoon + Spellblade (rarely Focus)

Notable bosses:

Garula: Owned by Defend and Counter. Fitting since he's all counters himself.

Liquid Flame: Spellblade's by no means a free win here! The hand can't be hit, and the counters/damage are nasty otherwise with a non-healing team. Barely pulled through.

Sandworm (2 resets): Holy shit. So, this normally terrible boss has Auto-Protect so he can last a while, and I had no spammable healing better than Potions. His 60 MT damage + Sap actually is kinda scary! Had to break down and use a couple Elixirs, then he was easy. Any team with magic damage or healing sould have little issue here, I just had a rare one without!

Archeoaevis: Competent due to lack of weaknesses and my continued lack of healing, but I was able to slug it out with him okay. Mighty March (regen song)'s best showing!

Titan: Dodge Earth Shaker via Alluring Air to charm a Ghaelicat into floating me in advance.

Manticore (1 reset): Vulnerable to stop, but I got lazy and he actually overwhelmed me once since his AI decided to spam Aqua Breath. Second attempt I just locked him down as one should.

Dragon Pod: lol Kick for the win

Atomos: Sleep Spellblade. Here I learned that it doesn't apply sleep if the target is already asleep, so I had to be kinda careful about alternatingly hitting him with that and something else.

Seal Guardians: The team is only barely strong enough to blitz past each crystal limit range, so did so. I botched one but that only meant some Phoenix Downs had to come out.

Exdeath 1: Actually kinda competent since my party was at a huge low point for damage here! Very, very slow fight but plenty of Hi-Potions and Phoenix Downs, along with Swift Song, sufficed here.

Once I hit W3 I realised that all I needed was enough HP to survive one particular attack, so I reached Level 33 and started running from everything else because why not. As usual I buy Hermes Sandals immediately and pick up my appropriate legendary weapons (as well as an early Rift dive to get the Enhancer for my MK) and the rest of the game largely folds. Hero's Rime starts seeing play here for any bosses lasting longer than a couple rounds (except Omniscient).

Omniscient: Silence Spellblade spam so that he can't cast Return despite my physical offence. Unfortunately here I learned that using Spellblade removes weapon elements, so I couldn't use Air Knives like I'd planned.

Omega: So Bard and Mystic Knight may be the two best jobs for this. Two Romeo's Ballads used in alternation lock him down utterly, Thundaga Spellblade lets me hit him decently hard.

Catastrophe: Notable for one reason only: his Earth Shaker I had no answer for, so the level I bothered to reach? Entirely for this guy. I probably could have gone out, got Float cast on me via confuse and use the extra turn from him dispelling it to blitz him, but that is way too much effort for how deep into the dungeon this is.

Twintania: I don't always blitz this guy, but with Holy Spellblade and Hero's Rime, why not?

Necrophobia: So I screw this one up and am constantly reviving from his doubleact near-OHKO, but it's all ST and I'm auto-hasted so I'm not really in danger of losing.

Tree Exdeath: I screw this one up and he hits me with a really lucky Meteor! Fortunately I'm able to recover.

Neo Exdeath: Break Spellblade = dead bottom part. Odin = dead back part. Hero's Rime has had a lot of time to get started in the first fight, so enjoy ~10k hits, other two parts! At least he lives to get off Grand Cross.


I'd like to do another this year, it'll be Random so maybe I can finally get Black/White/Blue Mage. Seriously that'd be awesome, I am 10/12 so far for getting fighter jobs and am due for some mages!

Overall fiesta job ranking of the jobs I have drawn to date:

Time Mage > Ninja > Mystic Knight ~= Bard > Knight > Monk ~= Ranger >> Dragoon > Berserker


Also I replayed Super Mario Bros. 2 randomly because why not, it is great.

[Fudozukushi]

Fallout New Vegas: Randomly had the urge to start playing this again.  PS3 broke sometime in the months since I'd stopped playing it, so just bought it up for PC since it included all the DLCs and stuff for 20$ only.  Before anyone wonders why I got it for the PS3 in the first place, my PC was a piece of shit and I lacked the funds to get a better one.  But that's old news.  New news time.

Don't know where I'm going Ending-wise but I've left myself all free and open for that.  My prime goal was trying for explosives/energy weapons with low intelligence/charisma to see the idiot dialouge options.  Then I'd just shoot my way out of everything.  Excepts explosives blow when all you have is dynamite and if I didn't have the merc grenade rifle I probably would have said screw it.  For whatever ingenious reason I chose the +5Points to all Skills/-10% EXP gain Trait on a character not built for min-maxing.  The throw speed/-throw range one as well which is crap since grenades are too cumbersome for wide open and bunching up is less likely in vaults and stuff.  Though I got some small use in wiping out the Protectertron room at Helios.  Actually got the Energy Weapon damage achievement before explosives.  Then I got normal guns too because I had to rely on them so early.  Then during my Ranger-murder run for one of the Gun Runner Challenge achievements I somehow got the unarmed one just from twenty dudes.  Though that led to the hilarious realization that if I stealth-killed guys with the fist-weapon that makes my kills explode no one reacts to it at all.

I was pretty much stupidly poor most of the time until I got to Vegas.  I never raised Barter yet still have 25 in it somehow.  Snow Globes were the only thing that allowed me to get my Luck Implant and break the banks.

Felt like seeing Lonesome Road since I never did it PS3.  Red Glare's rapid-fire rockets were awesome, but ramming into everything's DT wasn't.  Deathclaws randomly killing me in one hit wasn't fun either.  Courier's Mile was hell, spent over two-hundred rockets on the Marked Men so I was forced into using only Thump-Thump against the deathclaws.  I wanted to lure them into a Satchel Charge trap since the Marked Men nearly killed me a dozen times with them, but all the Deathclaws ran away when I planted them.  So I charge off after them and they magically circle behind me and complete bypass the trap.  Luckily they all group up enough for Thump-Thump to cripple the hell out of them.  I'm as fast as can be so I manage to outspeed them cripple and kill'em off.  Anyway, talked down Ulysses and stopped the launch.  I'd already blown one forgiveness and wanted Idolized with the BoS because pointless number boosters amuse me.  For some daft reason I put my bonus SPECIAL point into a stat that's not Endurance.

Best part is all the extra Ranger type armors.  Well after writing and all that.

Then did Old World Blues since I wanted all the giant bonuses it gave.  Decided I'd do the DLCs in reverse order at this point too.  Primarily used Energy Weapons here, especially that Unique gatling laser that thing is just dreamy.  Killed the Legendary Bloatfly with it.  Well with glitching too but eh.  Speaking of glitching the game kept crashing like a sone of a bitch near the end.  Couldn't even make it to one side of the Sink it got so bad at the end.   Anyway, this also gave me the final stealth speed boost, so now sneaking's almost as fast as running.  Despite the stealth suit's speed boost it's actually slower because of it being medium armor.

Listening to Ulysses' tapes in reverse is weird.  Think Tank, Mobius and Brain are all as entertaining as ever.  Amusingly failing the speech checks with Mobius seem to continue the conversation on as normal anyway. 

At this point the sheer volume of levels means I'm getting high-up in secondary skills even with ass-bottom Intelligence.

Future Playthrough Ideas.
Pacifist Pro-Legion Run.
Hilariously Anti-Legion Run until I get forgiveness then Ave True to Caeser.
MAXIMUM NCR.  Anti-Material Rifle Ranger.  With all the DLC armors I don't have to worry about faction-neutral the whole time.
Quick little run to see if I can get the Intelligence Implant at Level 1.
RIP AND TEAR: Kill everything.  EVERYTHING.  The Mojave only needs me and Yes Man.  EDIT: Oh and Vendortron I guess.

[Fenrir]

I found pacifist is pretty fun in NV. Pro Caesar though??

FF3 PSP Yattaf solo:
I've still not grinded on this run at all. Yet I one-rounded Garuda. This Yattaf is canon.

Anytime I hit a challenge, I try a lot of different interesting strategies that all fail. Then I switch back to Monk and the challenge goes away immediately.
I was in this cave filled with status enemies. I used the Knight for his partial status immunity shield. Right before the boss I switched back to Monk, not even caring about job downtime. The boss still exploded.

FF3 DS would be really cool with a rebalance patch. No job levels. No job downtime. HP growth unrelated to class. Lower endgame physical damage. Save points (OMG) Item descriptions telling you about status immunities.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm fine with job levels really (it's a nice reward for staying in a class a bunch, you have to be careful to balance it with the more pressing needs of switching jobs though... fortunately FF3 has those!). Job sickness is bleh, the original handled it better. HP growth... honestly isn't that big a deal, the spread at endgame is very small and it's a bone to some classes which are otherwise kinda mediocre (Monk is underwhelming at normal levels; they just aren't balanced for solo exp focusing). The rest, no arguments.

[Fenrir]

No job levels allows for more flexibility. Giving a reward for not changing anything to the way you're playing  (for the whole game) and punishing for experimenting (even lightly) is not very good design. Especially in a JRPG. One of the best strategies is to keep a fighter for the whole game, which is pretty terrible and boring.
No job levels would also allow special abilities to be useful from the getgo. Things like Viking's Provoke need it.

This situation is similar to RPGs giving more or less XP for characters not in the party.  Full XP to everybody is better because you can change your characters at anytime with no downsides; your short term strategy has no effect on long term. FF3 would be better if its jobs worked the same.


I find that HP growth is just a kick to the mage classes for no reasons. Monk and Black Belt do get a bonus when they're mostly useless in game, but say scholar and evoker and bard get to be even more screwed.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, fair enough, I can't really disagree with any of that. (Except that I found Provoke decent even at low job levels. edit: checking the mechanics it is scrubbier than I remembered though.) I do think there is sometimes something to be said for rewarding an investment in a class instead of just always letting the player pick the best job for the situation, but FF3 probably overrewards this (despite encouraging you to switch jobs considerably more than some similar games).

[SnowFire]

(despite encouraging you to switch jobs considerably more than some similar games).

Not that much, since your damage utterly tanks going from JL 50 to JL 1!  Sure, some of the blunter instruments (Mini dungeon) or Garuda work, but many don't.  I guess you're theoretically supposed to use Viking for the Water dungeon because it has Lightning damage or something?  But eh, they'll have to be a pure Provoke bunny since as noted their damage will suck way worse than Fighter/Monk/Knight/whatever you built.  There's a dungeon that's supposed to hype using Dark Knight, but I didn't really see the advantage at all.  The only case where FF3DS got the balance right was Heim's dungeon - you can use a Scholar and get a boost, or you can #YOLO it up and fight at a disadvantage, but a winnable one (unlike the Mini dungeons which just force you to switch to mages, thus you can't exactly "make a mistake").

Anyway, the proper balance between a mild reward for sticking at a class while still having the flexibility to change would of course be X% of JL spillover, and then a generally slower rate of JL advancement.  If all your side classes - including the ones which you haven't unlocked yet (Ninja, Black Belt!) - got 75% of the JL of your main class, that'd be a pretty good balance.  (Go ahead and keep job sickness though, I don't want to feel obligated to switch all my character setups before a boss, and job sickness is an excuse to pick a set and use it throughout the entire dungeon.)