Ah the Sunken Cave mission. Easily the biggest difficulty spike of the first four chapters.

Yeah you can get all of them in one go. It's worth it to just go through and pick up all the people in the right order. It sounds like a hassle but the hints on all of them make it exceedingly clear when to pick them up to keep them till the end. Saves you a lot of walking.

I think it's pretty troutty that you have to go back out of the cave to get one of the energy cores. I'd have never thought to do that on my own. You can actually get it before you even start the mission.

As far as I can tell the main reason to save everyone in the cave is that it opens up the side rooms in which you can find a chest with a pretty neat Defense Bracer in Chapter 5. Though that still makes saving the last guy a total waste of time from a meta perspective. Actually I don't know, does the reward you get change depending on how many peeps you saved?

Ah god I really wanted to yell at the screen when you didn't realize you could've just warped back to the entrance with the last two guys >_>

A pretty neat trick I learned about sometime is that you can leave the mission, save and restart the mission and you won't have lost any progress. So you can save directly before the boss fight which given his difficulty is pretty cool.

And there he is, Yojimbo himself. I remember how I totally shat my pants the first time I saw Zanmato and was first thankful that it just reduces your HP/MP to 1, but then it turns out that's actually preeeetty deadly especially with how well it synchs with the Poison he loves to inflict. Going in with poison protection is definitely a good idea and makes the fight a lot easier, plus he telegraphs Zanmato nicely so you can stack a healing item to go out straight after it happens. Mega Potions and Megalixirs actually end up being really useful here. Probably the best fight to use them in in the entire game. No reason to be stingy with them.

Not gonna lie, when Yuna sapped his MP I had to laugh.

See this is why I don't like the Charm Bangle. It smurfs up your dressphere progression so hard. Having at least one or two active abilities learned for Samurai would've sped up the battle quite a bit. I mean sure they cost MP but recovering that would've been certainly worth it.

Daigoro is such a troll in this battle. I remember once I went into this battle perfectly prepared, but I didn't have any turns ready when Yojimbo used Zanmato and I got wiped out with 2 Daigoro attacks and one Wakizashi before I even got the heal off.

It's funny because you'd have survived and gotten back to full health for your entire party if you had used a Mega Phoenix instead of a Hi-Potion at the end there. That thing revives even the user if they get KO'd while using it.

I did this to you? WELL EXCUSE ME IF YOUR PLAYING SUCKS. Well true having a better damage dealer might've helped. And using dresspheres with some AP in them. And having an MP independent healer. Okay yes different dresspheres would've made this fight a lot easier. Happy?

But tbh I actually would like to see you try the fight again with the same dressphere, this time knowing what's ahead and minmaxing to the best of your abilities. Good luck with that!