FF5 - Beat my second fiesta this year: Blue Mage, Time Mage, Monk, and White Mage. Blue + Time crush every boss so horribly, I figured white mage would help with the breaking bosses (Curaga is more than the game can typically handle) but it ended up largely superfluous. I decided not to use the Magic Lamp, Dark Spark, or Level 5 Death to give the final boss more of a chance, it didn't help. Mighty Guard is pretty much all that's needed to reduce Neo Exdeath to the complete chump I remember him being in normal playthroughs.
Randoms were more interesting. Since this team annihilates bosses but not randoms I decided to turn this into a no-run playthrough. Most randoms still aren't super-hard with the blue magic swiss army knife, but figuring out how to efficiently deal with them was fairly good fun. (Time Magic also had a definitely role to play here of course). Some thoughts on the blue spells, now that I've played through the game with them...
Goblin Punch - At first it's pretty great, use a physical... from the back row, against the back row, doesn't matter. It's even ITE! Pretty great. Basic physicals don't scale well in FF5 though, not even Excalipoor could save this. Basically useless after the fire crystal.
Vampire - Great healing move in W1 (even does decent damage!), remains cost-efficient healing forever though you have to pick your targets because MEvade messes with it. On a side note, as cool as FF5 is, I'm not really a big fan of the MEvade mechanic, especially since it's a hidden stat in the bestiary.
Aero - Okay elemental move early, tends to slightly outdamage Goblin Punch and can also be used MT. Costs MP though and nothing amazing, hardcore outclassed later.
Flash - Good against Garula. Low accuracy means that's about it.
Pond's Chorus - Almost nothing in the game can be hit by toad it feels like. Garula and Twintania I guess. I don't bother (Garula can heal from it so whatevs, just use Flash).
- Generally considered useless because Vampire is it, only it heals. It did have some use in Karnak escape though (one of the roughest patches in the game due to low offence of Blue + Time at this point), as once at low HP I could spam it while Vampire would send me back to low damage. (Mainly against Gigases who absorb wind.)
Aera - 10 MP for a 50 power spell is okay, remains serviceable for MT even later. Nothing special though it's obviously the peak damage for a time after you get it.
Aqua Breath - At 38 MP it's pricy. But 75 power MT is really good (second only to summons and scrolls for a long time). Even after it is eclipsed by the cheaper, more damaging Aeroga, it maintains uses due to being non-elemental and ignoring barriers. Also it overkills Sandworm and some other desert creatures.
Moon Flute - Full-party berserk! This was useful in the library where you can face thousands of monster HP which is relatively easy to cut through and Barehanded (due to Monk) and Main Gauche meant my physicals were actually pretty good! Then I never used it again. The ATB reset of inflicting berserk seriously hurts this.
Magic Hammer - I dunno. In theory this probably hoses some things since nothing immunes it, but accuracy meh whatever, never found a use.
Level 5 Death - Adamantoise, Launchers, Atomos, and certain randoms. Potential further abuse with Level 2 Old which I didn't really bother with this playthrough. We all know the abuses of this, it's good.
Self-Destruct - Ignores everything, but this is still crap.
Dark Spark - Level alteration allows for some evil with the associated spells, and hey it also decreases status evade and in many cases magic damage, so that's something. Highly situational though, with that accuracy.
Missile - Now this is more like it. Even with Time Magic cutting into its niche a bit, gravity spells are pretty cool as you can hit lots of things with them. It's also got a very low MP cost. Plus, who doesn't like killing giant plant bosses with Missiles?
Flame Thrower - Bread and butter offence move for late W1 and early W2, though time magic served up Comet as competition. With the Flame Rod this is a respectable 75 power for only 5 MP. Retains some use against fire weaks even in W3.
Transfusion - Makes your MP supply endless, particularly with Raise. In practice I didn't find this a huge issue and find Transfusion a bit cumbersome, though. Still saw use on occasion, although realistically just being more liberal with Elixirs would replace it.
Death Claw - Uh it's Missile except way more expensive and less accurate. In exchange for this it lowers enemy HP even further and briefly stuns them. I find that a losing trade in general but there may be exceptions.
Level 4 Graviga - Low-cost MT move. It only works on targets of a certain level who are ALSO gravity-suspect, but it's actually not bad anyway due to perfect accuracy. Really helps wreck some formations at a low cost, particularly in the pyramid and the rift.
Time Slip - 90 accuracy sleep. Old may hurt this more than it helps I find, since if the enemy immunes either the whole attack whiffs. Anyway sleeping enemies never wake up against mages so they are sitting ducks.
Off Guard - Nice if something has high defences but low status evade. ... this doesn't happen often. Worth it against Gil Turtle though, and uh I guess Azulmagia.
Aeroga - The skillset's signature attack spell. Air Knives make it quite potent, the best generally applicable ST and MT offence. Air's even a good element overall, which is nice. 24 MP's a touch costly but not too bad, and you get Gold Hairpins to help out the spamming of this. Would have been even better if I hadn't drawn the only two non-knife classes.
White Wind - Nice stuff, MT healing! Pretty easy to parlay it into near-full either from using the highest-HP caster or healing them first.
Level 2 Old - Weird little spell. Slows and destroys the magic of various enemies. Can be comboed into Level 5 Death if you really want. I don't make extensive use of it but it certainly has its place. Completely annihilates any boss foolish enough to have an even level, but that's probably why almost none do (castle Exdeath is the notable one).
1000 Needles - Kinda costly. Is great if you get it in world 1, but by world 3 it's just a more reliable Comet which costs four times more. See Omega for more, that's the main place I used it.
Level 3 Flare - Pretty decent in the Phoenix Tower's desert and the Rift (desert and castle), where quite a lot of enemies get hit by it. It's a low-cost Bahamut against those enemy types.
Mighty Guard - Hello, bosses. You lose, have a nice day. Better than halving all damage in a game where almost nothing dispels? Sign me up. Oh yeah it also floats because why not. The capstone broken ability of a broken skillset.
Mind Blast - I dunno, it probably has some uses (magic evade ignoring status) but none I really found.
Doom - I used it once against... King Behemoths, hoping they wouldn't counter it (they do). No real use for this, although I could have used it to kill Neo Exdeath's back piece if I'd remembered it. Perfect accuracy gives it a niche, at least.
Roulette - Is shit. For some reason you get it super-late.
Lilliputian Lyric - I didn't get it. Its main use is probably mini-ing your own shield user for insane evade, since enemies almost uniformly immune it.
Omega's the one interesting point of note on the playthrough. First of all, I have Quick, so it is possible to beat him with "inflict HP Leak, cast Quick, let HP Leak work for hours". (Poison Rods and Mind Blast both let me inflict HP Leak.) But honestly that bores me, so I tried to win legit. The problem with that is my offence is horrible. Against Omega's 150 MDef, perfect magic evade, and absorption of non-lightning elements, almost everything I have is hosed (Meteor, status, Aeroga, Aqua Breath, you name it). 1000 Needles is the sole exception here. The problem is that Omega will counter every attack, 1/3 of the time with Encircle, which erases a PC around 40% of the time (less if they have an Aegis Shield). This would slowly wear me down. So instead, I dig in. Reflect Rings on everyone stops most of his skillset (exceptions: all his counters, as well as Flame Thrower, Earthquake, Maelstrom, Rainbow Wind, and Wave Cannon). Wave Cannon just removes half of max HP, White Wind that nonsense. Earthquake can be dealt with by Float. Rainbow Wind (silence) can be stopped by Sage's Surplices on the mages (the Monk gets unsilenceable blue magic). Flame Thrower is survivable in shell, and I also have a Flame Shield. So I can stall forever. People only die if (a) Flame Thrower hits someone unshelled or not at full HP or (b) Wave Cannon + Maelstrom doubleact means HP Leak can kill someone if I'm unlucky and don't react quickly. Also dead people come back with no shell or float, so (c) Earthquake if I don't reapply one. All my reflect rings means I have to bounce haste/shell/float off Omega and hope they hit the right things.
Regardless yeah, I'm fine defensively. Offensively... every so often Omega casts Search, which causes him to target the target of Search with -everything- for one round. This includes his counters. And Search is reflectable! So yeah, wait for him to cast Search, unload 1000 Needles. Quick can also be used. 1/3 of the time (it feels like less grr) he'll even counter with Mustard Bomb and hit himself for a further 1500 + some HP Leak, the rest of the time he uses attacks which fail against himself. Still, this lets me win. ... in theory. In practice, reflected Atomic Rays (heal for ~1500) and post-Search Flame Throwers on self (heal for ~1100) eat into my offence. I eventually run out of Elixirs from restoring MP and lose. What's weird is I feel like I did way, way more than his max HP in this time even with the healing... but I guess I could be wrong. That or he heals off some weird mechanic I'm not aware of, but I can't see any thing in the BMG which would make this the case. Oh well! Still pretty happy I came up with a way to stall against Omega indefinitely and even get some perfectly safe damage in.
Gil Turtle (Blink + Off Guard a bunch, then Comet spam) and Shinryu (blink + berserk with Quick to help out) are painless by comparison. Berserk + Blink also allows me to own Omniscient hard. And King Behemoths, the game's attempt at magic spoilers (although in normal games, they are magic spoilers with no defence against Odin). Ultimately this may even have been White Mage's main purpose in this playthrough, though they did help out in some other ways.
Good times.
Other gaming:
I haven't been able to get into Valkyria Chronicles 2. Don't hand me 20 PCs at once, I am overwhelmed. (This is probably just an excuse. I guess I'm just not in the mood for the game at the moment.)
Instead I am replaying the two best games I have played this year, which are Fire Emblem 13 and Star Ocean 4. For FE, just doing Hard Mode again since it's about where I like my FE challenge. I'll probably have a FAQ for the reinforcements though.
Going without Fred this time (well after chapter 3 anyway), using pair up more than last time to get a better feel for it. I definitely find Pegasus Knight + Knight pairup do a great job of negating each other's weaknesses, but this is old news. For Star Ocean, playing on Universe Mode, up to Cardianon, which is definitely where the game picks up I feel. The first area of the game is kinda weird, item resource limits you never have to deal with anywhere else in the game. It's fun in its own way just feels like a different game.
