I’ll need to look into that once I get all the peeps and all the jobs. Right now, I’m having fun with just Vaan the Shikari. Penelo the Black Mage has been pretty cool so far too. I found a blind spell in Giza Plains and that turned Thextera and Flowering Cactoid into cakewalk basically.
It also helps that certain support licenses are shared among all the boards so leveling it up on one will have it shown as picked up on the other board. This means in order to get all of the valuable Speed, Strength, and Magic licenses, you'll have to plan carefully. It was the reason why I gave Monk to Basch instead of Foebreaker cause Foebreaker ultimately had the exact same support licenses as Knight, and if I wanted to get any more boost for Basch, I needed to switch him to the Monk which earned him another speed license and a crap ton more strength and HP licenses.
Yeah, I was actually thinking of doing that. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining - I was worried having two boards just eliminated all need of making sacrifices in this game, but it turns out there’s this and that’s great.
That's inevitable I'm afraid, especially since Knight and Bushi have several great options, so they will likely take on all of the Espers. Shikari also has an annoying one that involves getting access to a strong mid-level ninja blade early, or the end game ones, which you'll likely not see until Giruvegan. It's honestly one of the better implemented mechanics for the new license board. I will say you should hold off accessing Quickenings until you give your party the second license board.
Now I’m kinda stressing out over how I’ll play my Quickenings and Espers on the board. I’m worried I’ll have my way to some useful licenses blocked
It's certainly a better cast than most of the fans feel it is.
I think this and VI may actually have my favorite casts from the numbered games.
I felt the same way about Penelo in my playthrough. She's actually a more fun and insightful character. Fran is also Ms. Exposition for like 90% of the game. Really, I feel like people missed the point with the game's cast overall.
Also, I really cannot comprehend why people hate Vaan. I mean, yeah, the Rabanastre bit is pretty much the only time he’s in the spotlight, but he’s presented as an idealist, albeit flawed and naive, who feels very frustrated with the occupation. What with a lot of my own country’s 20tg century literature focusing on youths with similar ideals, I find his struggle very real. I really like Vaan.
The only thing I don’t like so far is how they changed the look of the bestiary. I loved having the beast artwork there, the rotating 3D models really just don’t do it for me. But still, that’s a very minor nitpick.
