A Kind of Magic

It’s not over yet!  You can now travel back to any point in the timeline with your current… well, everything.  All of the battles will be scaled to your level as well (including the enemy’s equipment).  Catiua and Vyce will go back to being controlled by the computer when appropriate, but they’ll still be their current selves.

These are my stats as of the final battle.

…oh, and there’s also post-game content, basically a Chapter 5.  I… actually haven’t done it yet, because there was a lot of other stuff I wanted to do first and after I hit the 200 hour mark I decided that I had played enough of the game for now.  It’ll be waiting for me when I come back to it, and I hear it culminates with you being able to get Lanselot Hamilton and Warren on your team.  The Songstress bit is a way to recruit the sister of Canopus I hear.

The game is pretty good about making sure you don’t lose any progress when you jump around in time.

Here’s an earlier battle but against an equally-leveled opponent.  Not that any generic foe is equal to the almighty Aloser.

I really hated to do this, but it’s the only way to get the Lord class.  Now I’m free to get it, then go back in time as if this never happened.  Catiua does indeed remain very alive on my team.  The Lord class is overpowered as all.  It doesn’t have any special T.G.Cid-like abilities, but he can use pretty much every skill he’s ever learned from any class.  The way to make him broken is to have the Knight’s Phalanx ability while using Two Weapons.  Phalanx is the ability that lets you take 95% less damage until your next turn, and it’s a special power meaning you can attack and then use it on the same turn.  The reason this isn’t already broken is that Knights are so defensive that they won’t do enough damage to build up the special points needed for Phalanx that quickly.  Lord Denim however can do that with two swords every round.

There are other things to see even before you go back to before the various plot branches.  If you don’t save Ozma, she has an “unexpected accident” and returns to Lodis as a vegetable.  Balxephon really did just want the social status being her husband would grant him.  What a bastard.

I get even more value than you might initially suspect out of this.  Because you level each class individually, I purposefully made sure to have a number of classes I hadn’t used yet, then changed all of my characters to new level 1 classes and “restarted” the game.  That means Denim is a Lord, Kachua a Princess, Vyce a Fusilier, Sherri a Shaman, Deneb a Wicce, and a few other regular classes I never used.  It’s one of the main reasons I put so much time into the post-game even without doing the Coda chapter.  Of course, if I didn’t do this then the enemies would still be level 27 even back in Chapter 1, but this is really a superb opportunity to build up those low-level classes.

She’s as minor of a character as you can get, but if Donatello dies here you get a replacement for him as it’s so early in the game that you need to get a healer from this battle no matter what.

I should also remind you that since equipment has level restrictions too, you can’t be a low level class with endgame stuff.

…saving Cistina is STILL difficult!

Denim is OP

I build up some monster classes on the way and even stuff like the basic Warrior class once I catch up to the level I left it at.  This is such a great game.

Now I can play through the Chaotic path without losing anything from my first game.  Vyce goes permaheel and you can never get him after this, but he’s still on my team.

Oh, and the jerk kills Ravness.  That means for most new players, this interesting Ravness character is killed off before even the second chapter.  Matsuno can be harsh.

A different Chapter 2 gets a different title.  I’ll end this series here even with more that can be done as it was a good run.  Tactics Ogre is the gift that keeps on giving.