FF1: Lich got one-rounded. Fire 3 -> Harm 3 -> done.
First Ice Cave trip for the Floater was relatively painless. Had one Mage encounter, with a single enemy. He Rubbed out Chaz, so synchronous leveling is no longer a thing. The sorcerers waited to put in an appearance until I came back to loot the place. Holy shit who thought this was a balanced enemy. First legitimate, no-way-out reset (though I reset a few times for Ordeals because the first encounter kept being "Get mobbed by medusas first encounter, someone instantly stoned" until I remembered how random spawns worked and fought something outside to throw off the sequence). Even overleveled, some obnoxious shit can happen. Damage variance is just so absurdly swingy. Fighting the red dragon in the volcano, and his spell does more damage than Wren (black mage) has for max HP. Game, what.
Probably Mirage Tower for loot -> sea shrine -> Tiamat for the remainder. Second half of the game is a pretty steady, unbroken dungeon chain with all the grinding frontloaded for Marsh/Earth Caves.
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Dragon's Dogma: Re-platinumed. That part took a while, I don't recommend it. I don't know why I did this other than the game just being a very satisfactory Girl Cid simulator. Anyway I just mention it at this point because I maxed out all the classes this time and got a lot more enjoyment out of one of them than previous (spoilers it isn't Warrior. Warrior is still zzzzz). It's Sorcerer, which last time I only used long enough to get the MAG++ augment (passive bonuses transferable between classes) and then abandoned. That was a mistake because Capcom wanted there to be a Ye Shall Be As Gods class and Sorcerer is it. The high level spells are so absurd, just on a visual level, that they're a joy to use even if they sometimes turn out to deal not so much damage as you'd want them to (and it gets exponentially dumber, in the best way, if you can coax a party of pawns into synchronous casting of the same spell; I had to check videos to see this actually happen, but holy cronkers that's broke when it works). The casting times are murder, but the right spell can also sometimes immediately end a fight, so decent risk and reward balance with the right spell loadout. I didn't mess with the status spells much, but the damage spells are some of the most spectacularly grandiose attacks in gaming:
Bolide: I wanted this spell to be good, because it looks so amazing, but it's the most unreliable in the lot. I mean, it's Meteor Swarm, you float around dramatically in the air and then flaming death rocks rain from the sky. That's awesome! But it doesn't seem to be aimable at all, and the later bolts tend to hit a mile off. Usually I'll see the first one or two impacts squarely hit the nearest large enemy, then every other landing point is totally random and usually doesn't hit anything at all. Good for hydras since they're gigantic and weak to fire, but most of the time this means it isn't worth using at all for anything but the incredible visceral effect of flaming death pummeling the area.
Gicel: Probably the most useful just by virtue of being the most aimable. Giant ice spears lance out and shred everything. If an enemy's fast enough to dodge the first one, the others will still get it. Also only way I could stun Daimon as a sorcerer when he did his bullshit black hole attack. Maybe the simplest visual effect but still incredibly stylish.
Fulmination: It turns you into a walking Tesla sphere the size of a house. This is amazing. The A.I.'s kinda bad with this since you need to maintain the charge instead of just firing it off in a blink, but it's stupidly good in competent PC hands. If something can be stunned, it automatically loses the fight. It doesn't matter how many healthbars it has. Here, I made an accidental instructional video for this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM1DDK-n5jsThree giant undead wolves, three not!Taurus Demons, a buncha birds -> no survivors. Okay, the stupid cyclops knocked me out of the animation near the end and I had to cherry tap the last Eliminator, but still, downing six miniboss enemies with one spell is pretty fantastic.
Seism: Earthquake. It's pretty good? It's reliable at incapacitating and heavily damaging anything within range when fired, but the range could be better and it's centered on the caster rather than being aimable. But if it even is elemental, nothing seems to resist it, so solid 7/10 spell I guess. I got a ring that unlocked the third tier variety so I may be overrating vs. normal version of the spell.
Maelstrom: You don't like being able to see what's happening in your game, right? Then this is the spell for you! Maelstrom's hilarious, but I really can't tell if it's any damn good at all. If you use this in close confines, you really will not be able to tell what in the goddamn hell is going on in your game for an extended period of time. It seems to do its best damage by tossing enemies in the air and letting them hit the ground, which also doesn't work with a low ceiling. Also anything larger than a garm likely won't go airborne, though it probably will get stuck at the center of the vortex for the duration. Also it doesn't seem to do much of anything against giant enemies. But it is almost definitely the most ridiculously grandiose visual effect I have ever seen a game let you perform, and that counts for a lot. They really wanted Sorcerer to be the "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" class, and the animations sell it amazingly well. Verdict: only effective when it's overkill, but it is pretty damn satisfying to watch an entire mob of enemies get sucked in from across an entire floor and get hucked a mile into the air.
Flipside, if an NPC ever succeeds in casting this spell, you should just quit and reload your game. It's faster than waiting for the spell animation to finally stop juggling your corpse so you can reach a gameover screen.
I thought I was done here but there's a ring that enhances unarmed damage so I might do a fist-only speedrun just to see how stupid it is.
The endgame plot is still like someone read a Cliff's Notes of a Cliff's Notes of Nietzsche.
