Update Time:
RS2 - Beating Rocbouquet did end the era so I reset and opted to go through the Maze of Memory and unlock the Onmiyoji class which is my only means of using dark magic though I'm limited to whatever they start with. I also grinded a bit in Wynaga Lake to try and spark a few more techs. I finally have all the Bow skills. Afterwards, I decided to go the Mermaid route because it is such a cool quest. I did have to save scum a bit to get a better draw of choices for successor though. I'm doing a Female Nomad who specializes in Bows and Axes. My team will be a Martial Artist so I can try to spark the last few Melee moves, a Samurai to check them out and hopefully spark the remaining Sword/Greatsword moves I'm missing, a Salamander to check them out, and finally a Nerid to give them a second opportunity to impress me. I'll likely tackle Rocbouquet first since I have enough Charm protection accessories to protect my three male party members. Afterwards, I plan on taking down a souped up Subier since I opted to let him take the Narwhal Princess and I'll finally unlock the Diver class. Sadly, I think I screwed myself out of the Victor optional boss fight since I think one of the prerequisites is earning the Amazon class and I accidentally screwed that up.
RS3 - Well I put my sweatbands on, through in my favorite 80s montage music and trained in this game, effectively doubled my party's HP and Katarina finally earned a Crown for her Tech attacks. No magic for her it seems. I reached the sealed dorr in the Archfiend's Lair and returned to Lance to recieve the Royal Ring from the Matriarch's descendant. I traveled to the east and found Romancing China, did the quests and got the Archfiend's Armor. Came back to the west and tackled Forneus again. Managed to squeak out a victory but it was close. Would not recommend starting with him. Having Black over Herman though is a nice boon and my team's been doing better ever since. I completed the Maximus quest which was fairly entertaining and cool. Like the Sinistrals are kind of just chaotic evil in this game, but it was nice to have a serious antagonist you could really love to hate. Maximus is a real bastard in this game, and for those who may have started the mobile entry, he's a bastard in that game too. Of course completing this quest unlocks a crap ton of gear belonging to both the Archfiend and Matriarch, so I'm swimming in good gear now. I also won back the Masquerade which started Katarina's quest in the first place so now I was able to return to Loanne which also meant I could finish the Merchant Trade minigame.
I love how the final mission of this quest involves you ''saving capitalism'' by trying to stop an evil monopoly from taking over all business... by forming your own monopoly. I don't know if the devs were making a joke about this or they didn't realize the delicious and sadly real world irony of it all. This ended up being a bitch though because while I bought out like 95% of all the businesses in the second part, it turns out I failed to get a particular business to go to market so I could buy them up and that was the last one the Abyss Co. had. So I spent a good chunk of my time just trying to raise the prestige of two lowly companies to get this missing one to go to market. It took awhile but I got it done and saved capitalism by cornering the market on everything.
I also took down the Road Machine for the Professor and ventured into Leonid's castle to receive the Holy Grail. Surprisingly I took down Yama with little problem unlike my first playthrough. Helped that I had more experience this time and actually went in prepared with Blunt and Lightning defense. I did have to reset here because I accidentally let my inventory fill up and couldn't get the Holy Grail of which Leonid ridiculed me for. So resetting and emptying out some junk I didn't need, I got my grail and Leonid. I did have Tiberius for the Maximus quest but opted to drop him because I didn't feel like trying to build another mage on my team and frankly, he's a bit of a dick anyway to Khalid and his people. I did like his Scottish brogue he talks in. I recruited the Fairy temporarily to earn the trophy, but for now I'm sticking to Leonid to get his trophy and to play around with his kooky design. I will say I am having a hell of time trying to spark techs. I even ran into an Asura doing the Thieves Monster hideout and that ended disastrously because my team was ill prepared for the fight, and since he's a boss of the mission, it wouldn't let me run when I did spark something. I guess I am lying when I say I'm not sparking anything, I did earn a few weapon skills for weapons, and I've been sparking a lot of defensive techs just not the ones I would want. I also managed to finally spark the awful Disarm tech for Greatswords. Ugh this move has been a pain. Ward had sparked it towards the end of my first playthrough but never mastered it and the move is a costly counter that doesn't have nearly as high of a success rate as I would like. I'm also having issues getting Nora to master a high end Club move she sparked during the Forneus fight. I hate mastering moves in this game, it slows down the process of earning new moves since I now have to dedicate so much time spamming the moves to keep them permanently.
My next move is to take on the wind Sinistral and not fight her with an awesome dragon this time to earn the other trophy. I'll likely take on the Earth Sinistral next and leave the fire one for last. After that, it's just exploring the Ruins near Romancing India, tackling the Ancient Cave, and then grinding in the Remaster only Phantom Maze to build a killer team for the final stretch. I need to give Muse another magical element to make her more versatile for instance. I don't know how I feel about tackling Oblivion's True form. The final boss continues on CoD's whole ''defeat my servants first to weaken me, or fight me at full power'' nonsense. There is an achievement attached to it though.