Bravely Second - this game has France be the moon, a main character mixing Gravy metaphors up all the time leading to "coup de gravy" and a Bishop who looks like a fat Wolverine called Nikolai Nikolovic.
10/10 game of the year.
Charioteer is more best than I expected. Fencer looks sad and not playing nicely with cross class stuff, probably nice in challenges though
Excellent. I look forward to you playing this and not just because it is a pretty good game that more people need to play.
FF13 - So I beat Chapter 9 under No Crystarium rules. Most of the chapter features a fixed party of Lightning/Fang/Hope, Protect/Slow are my only statuses. The following things are jerks:
-Deckdrones, which are quite capable of overwhelming even Protected Sentinel strats at my level with their ST damage blitz. And by "overwhelming" I mean "killing the sentinel and then immediately retargeting and then killing Lightning".
-PSICOM Huntresses whose buff parade I can't dispel (leading to nasty beatdowns), and they randomly half physical/magical damage because misandry.
-Vikings. One isn't bad, but they can do loads of fire physical damage (Barfire sure would be nice). Slow helps keep 'em under control. When they show up in large numbers that's bad.
-Vespid Soldiers cast wind spells and I don't have shell, too many at once is a bad time if I can't blitz one down fast.
Kalavinka is the mini-boss and not too bad, his big thing is a nasty Hellstorm Bolt which does big physical damage. Lightning with my best +HP Bangle can just survive it under Protect (with Fang in SEN because every little bit counts). Otherwise he's not too notable, Slow and Protect both work at least. One reset here, the easiest boss since Skytank.
Final section of the Palamecia lets me choose my party, which means I get to choose how to die horribly, because a lot of the random formations here are brutal. Lightning is forced sadly, which is bad since she has the second worst HP and no tricks. I usually use Hope/Fang for the other two anyway since no Hope = Lightning dies too easily and Fang just has the best stats + hey Slow is cool. PSICOM Destroyers can make short work of my party with their bazookas, and there are a few other scary formations. I'm able to defeat just enough of the formations to get every treasure, though (fortunately there are quite a few paths through here to do so).
Barthandelus 1 - Is brutal, as expected. He has four subparts that you have to kill first. At first they're not too bad, using L1 spells, but after a certain amount of time they will power up and start using -ara spells which have some AoE. After even more time they power up again and use -aga spells, this is brutal. Each of the four parts is weak to one element and absorbs the other (which it uses). I don't have Shell. Fang is more or less a must-use due to her high stats; I try for a while to use Vanille (for Deshell) and Hope (because he has two elements, and can heal), but end up settling on Snow because he has the most HP and is a good fast caster. I generally use Fang in COM, and either Lightning or Snow in RAV depending on whether ice or lightning is a better element, with the other in SEN/MED. Both going defensive is an option though not a great one because the more time goes by the worst things get, I really need to down the parts as fast as possible and building chain to stagger them is crucial for that. Anyway I'm never able to get three of them down before the -aga spells start flying and even two of those at once is too much, so I end up using a Fortisol to give me the offensive push I need.
Once all the parts are dead the fight is generally easier. Staying fully healed is still important because Thanatosian Smile is huge AoE physical damage that almost one-shots Lightning, but he attacks only relatively rarely (especially after Slow) so it's not too bad. Beating the crap out of him when he uses Destrudo is important so I can at least knock it down to second stage, then SEN-tanking it works.
Chapter 10! So I get secondary roles! I finally start spending CP. I'm able to get Snow Protect and Cure, Fang her first two RAV spells (Fire and Thunder) and Cure, and Hope Ruin, and that's my initial team. It struggles its way through the Fifth Ark but can take down the easier fights. Circuitrons (the local bomb-type) blowing up on the leader is something I can't handle at all, Berserkers take forever but are doable, and there are a couple fights against Noctilucale x10 which is just brutal even though their drain attack is surprisingly physical and hence Protect helps. Sazh/Lightning get Deprotect (and for Lightning, Deshell) which helps a more offensive strategy; Sazh sees some use because he also has Cure, though I usually manually control him so I can actually make use of full chains on already-statused enemies (the AI won't actually use SAB spells that have already landed). Vanille I end up building as a physical COM since she gets Attack first and her stats are more oriented that way, so I mainly pull her out against enemies who resist magic, but also because Sazh has only Deprotect. Greater Behemoths I can beat with Snow/Vanille/someone, but it takes a while so I don't do it much.
Finally I get up to Cid and get annihilated repeatedly, which makes me change my rules of the challenge so (a) I can actually beat this fight, and (b) randoms don't take forever. But I'll update that in a later post.
