Getting my ass whooped... (As usual)

I'm fighting Algus for the first time. (I don't know if you have to fight him again) and I keep dying. What do I do?

Is this at Fort Zeakden? I don't think you have to defeat all the opponents there, only Algus.

In this battle it's good to mix heavy hitters with characters with long distance attacks. Itwould be handy to have several Knights, with Item or White Magic as secondary ability for curing. Archers and Wizards would be also useful.

Yeah, the main thing I could suggest is to do what I did when I first played, I used Ramza as a Monk with Item, Delita as a Knight with White Magic (He only had like 2 or 3 spells like cure and protect), and I had 2 generics, one was a Mage (wizard with 2nd white magic), and an archer with item, that should be able to knock out Algus in a few turns

Just have Ramza and Delita with full knightish equipment (so max health and physical damage), a black mage with at least one level 2 spell (I can't remember if they were all the same or if fire was better for that fight), and two others that are running over towards algus (possibly one as an archer, that's what I had. An archer and a samurai.).

I just completely sacked myself. Ran straight at algus and attacked him. My black mage I did a suicide run to cast one last spell on him, then the knights swarmed her. My archer finished him off.

I guess you could do it more methodically (that's what I did my previous game, killed at least the black mages), but that takes forever!

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Be sure you know where you're going with your classes. My first game I had no clue what a Lancer, Samurai, and Ninja were, and I got stuck at the end of chapter three in Riovanes castle (course, that's also due to me saving over my only save game before I went into the castle). This time I went straight for Samurai, Ninja, and Calculators.