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Update time!
Stilshrine of Miriam is finished, the Gran Kiltias is dead, and we're now going to take a long trip to Archades so we can say hi to Daddy Bunansa. The Stilshrine is a pretty cool dungeon and I love the statues coming to life to attack. It's also interesting how this temple is for an older god that's not directly connected to Kiltia of Light religion, yet it was apparently built in the Galtean Age, and yet it also has mechanical wonders that are apparently older than the Galtean Age. My guess is the temple was repurposed by the Kiltia faith when they moved into Bur-Omisace and the temple was older than the faith itself. Kind of like Hagia Sophia is in the real world. The God of Swords has an interesting design as well being half hume and half bangaa. It makes me wonder if all the races have a common ancestor. See this kind of lore gives you something to chew on and speculate, we'll be having a very different conversation about lore drops when we get to the next entry on this list.
Judge Bergan also gets a killer intro like Judge Ghis and like Ghis before him, Judge Bergan is killed before I really had much of a chance to really enjoy the fight. Someday, I'll do a play through where I actually skip the side content and play the story mode straight to finally feel like these story bosses are an actual threat. Granted, that's also what Trial Mode and Minus Mode are for...
I also got the item needed to fight Zeromus, but considering I don't think I could take Cúchulainn on just yet, we're going to skip him for now. We're at the Tier 2 Espers who all have some weird gimmick that makes them like 10x more annoying to fight and sometimes require certain skills. I'm eyeing which jobs have Souleater just so I can make the Chaos fight less of a chore than it has to be. Likewise, I need some better status defense options before I tackle Cúchulainn and I sure as hell don't want to deal with Zeromus and his no magic rule while he's using gravity magic to systematically lower my health while hordes of undead are swarming around my party. I'll need to come up with a strategy that will work for Ashe, Basch, and Balthier who will be running point on that fight. Exodus will also be available once I reach the Mosphoran Highwaste north of Nalbina Fortress.
Before my next update, I'll do my breakdown of my six FFI classes I'm using, especially since most of them are mastered outside of the extra stuff through Espers.
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Okay, let's do a job breakdown at the moment. I will preface this to say that I haven't unlocked the extra stuff with Espers, seeing how I only have four at the moment, but I more or less have everyone's base stuff unlocked. I will be starting this in order of my least favorite class to my favorite.
Shikari - This one is finally starting to change for me, but I was fairly amused that this class perfectly recreates the Thief/Ninja dynamic as the thief portion is weird, and I've only recently started to enjoy the class now that I'm getting Ninja blades. The weirdest thing about this class is the high HP it gets. I figure I would get more evasion skills which I sort of due since I can use daggers with a shield, but daggers lack punch, and even though I obtained a Gladius before formally recruiting Basch that dagger has abeen a mixed bag due to it's Wind attribute. So I've got this meat shield that sort of hits like a wet noodle compared to my two other offensive classes because all of its weapons that are not guns use speed for the damage formula, but Ninja blades fix this due to their high combo rate and the fact TZA fixes Ninja blades by not making them all dark elemental, which was detrimental in a game where every third dungeon was Zombiepalooza. So the class is growing on me. I sort of want to unlock guns for it so I can have better long range options that are not magic, but I think the esper that unlocks it for me also unlocks useful spells for the other characters, we'll see. On the brightside, I did set up some decent steal gambit options that have made it useful for it's primary role.
White Mage - While Shikari has largely been disappointing in early game, White Mage largely falls into boring but practical. I am counting the hours until I acquire Protectga and Shellga because that will make this class much more useful. I do think it's weird they use Rods in this game, but I think that has more to do with XII making Rods the White Mage option when traditionally it was a Black Mage one, but whatever. I am sad it doesn't have access to Maces, which are also traditionally White Mage weapons, but I'm intrigued that it does get Greatswords. The class gets enough Battle Lore's to hold their own in combat, it's just the weapons don't hit hard, hence why I feel like Maces would have been a better option. This class is great when fighting a tough Mark or Esper, but ho-hum when dealing with everything else, especially when I have to streamline things to shut off support gambits when they are not needed. I am, stoked it learns Bubble as well, but disappointed I don't get Haste in any form. Useful class, but very "set em, and forget em" once you get all the spells.
Monk - This is a pretty solid class. It lacks the high damage potential of earlier incarnations, but makes up for it with surviability. I feel I will see some serious improvements once I get Ultima for the class and acquire two more Swiftness augments. The class does feel slow and Unarmed is only ever so slightly faster than using the Poles. The real advantage of not using poles is only against enemies with high magick defense. Poles may use the users strength for damage calculation but it also uses the enemy's magic defense as well. It is interesting to see this class on it's own. In my previous game, I mixed this class with Knight and got some insane bang for my buck in terms of HP boosts and magic options, but Knight is just a more useful class with more useful weapons by endgame, so I never really got to spend time using the weapons of this class. I sort of wish poles had a higher combo rate, or that Monk could unlock the Genji gloves but whatever. I do like the FFTA shout out in terms of the class getting some heavy White Magic options with it's esper placements. This class can effectively be turned into a second endgame white mage if you set them up right. So I have a feeling this class may climb the ranking before endgame.
Knight - I know this class swill be fighting for top spot before the end, but based on it's function for the first half, it's here for now. Like Shikari before it, this class also plays into the Warrior/Knight dynamic from FFI. One-Handed swords and shield combo is pretty snazzy in the early game, and once you start getting elemental weapons it can finally do some serious damage, but I already know this class really starts shine once Greatswords finally unlock, and the Excalibur alone makes this class overpowered by endgame. But the first half has this class fall into the same category as White Mage just for melee offense. Boring but practical. I did get some extra mileage by giving it to Ashe, meaning I got access to some basic white magic in the beginning so all that MP doesn't go to waste. It's white magic give it some good support options, but not as good as Monk's potential. I also feel it was not a smart move to make Telekinesis an optional skill I have to fight over with espers. But then again, when this class starts hitting hard, you're probably not going to care about options when the basic build is "give them Excalibur/Ragnarok/Tournesol and let them hit things really, really hard". If I could make any over changes, I would give them acess to a few Spears or Katanas, not the good ones mind you, but a few low to mid level ones might have been nice.
Black Mage - Magic is incredibly overpowered in this entry, which is nice for a change especially since magic feels underwhelming in later entries after this. But for a game where the main enemy strategy to take out the party is to overwhelm them with numbers, having a class that does crowd control really well is super useful. Low level magic is potent as well, but this class really starts to shine once the -ara and -aga level spells are acquired. and with the elemental staves to boost their damage, this class is just a beast. It's biggest flaws are the usual black mage issues of being fragile, having the lowest natural HP of the six classes, no good defensive options unless you unlock the heavy armor, but even that is just going to hurt the BLM's damage potential in the long run. It does get access to hand-bombs but this also feels a bit misguided (would have given this to White Mage honestly) since Black Mage doesn't need a long range option as a mage. Of anything, the class has the most lackluster options with espers with most of its best options being much needed HP boosts. Getting early access to elemental weak and vulnerable Gambits gave magic a huge boost in TZA.
Red Battlemage - Basically Black mage but with healing options, defensive options and decent combat options when magic is a no-go. This class is very much a master class with great options overall, especially since you can dramatically boost it's offensive potenital by the end with Esper options to acquire Greatswords and the -aga level spells. Maces are surprisingly good weapons despite being slow and a mage with better HP options and access to a shield makes them stand out quite a bit in the early game. They also get enough Magick Augments that the difference in elemental damage potential between it and Black mage is sometimes hard to notice until elemental staves get involved. But whereas BLM is screwed when the reflect status is around, RDM can use dispel to make life easier. I do wish it gained a few more useful Time Mage spells (haste anyone?) but getting exclusive access to Arcane was a nice touch to keep them feeling different from BLM in the early game. It was weird they don't get access to Blizzard, but whatever.
