In regards to which characters you should level up....

It's weird because each character has a fixed class such as thief, ninja, blue mage, monk, etc. but you can also customize them using accesories and magicite.

Accesories can alter your stats and give protection from various elements and statuses as in other FF games, but in this one they can even give you new abilities, such as the Dragoon Boots which give you the Jump command in battle. With magicite, you automatically give the person equipped with the magicite a summon spell, plus that character will start learning spells from the magicite and even get attribute bonuses at level ups! Really you can make anyone incredibly powerful if you work at it, even if they're a total weakling when you first get them, but some characters are overpowered right from the getgo.

Sabin learns new Blitz techniques all the time, and there's no penalty for using them such as MP cost, and they wind up doing QUITE a bit of damage! All you have to do is input a simple button command which you'll rarely if ever mess up.

Cyan's SwdTech command is even more lazy as all you have to do is wait for a bar to charge up to the appropriate level. Sure you might get hit once or twice while waiting, but it doesn't take long and it's easy to do tons of damage at a comparitively early point.

Edgar's Tool command is cheaper still since you just need to select the appropriate tool from a menu. No MP cost or anything, and many of the tools are VERY effective.

Shadow's Throw command is expensive sometimes, but his throwing specific weapons are highly effective.


There are other characters in the game who are less cheap but can still be potentially VERY powerful.

Strago learns the techniques of monsters by having the monster use the ability on him. It takes a while to learn all the abilities (especially the good ones), but many of them are very potent, such as Bad Breath, a true FF classic.

Setzer's Slot ability is literally a total gamble. He has a lot of powerful abilities that the slot machine can activate, but most of the time it'll only earn you a losing spin, which heals your party slightly. there's also an excessively rare chance that the ability will kill your party, but I've NEVER seen this happen, and I've played the game a LOT. He can find an accesory that turns Slot into GP Rain (called Spare Change in later games), but I can't reccomend that attack, since it's more expensive and less effective than just about every other ability in the game.

Mog's Dance ability is a lot like Rinoa's Angel Wing. It's effective but random. The "Dance" is a set of abilities that calls on the powers of the environment. Some of these are very powerful (instant death, high damage & poison, etc.), but some are worse than his regular attack. You learn Dances by fighting in a new environment.

Gau is a really odd and unique character in the FF series. He's somewhere between a Blue Mage and a Berserker. He learns the sets of attacks of various monsters by leaping onto them on his homeland The Veldt, which contains all monsters you've previously defeated. By doing this you can learn many of the powerful attacks you've had used against you thus far, but it's a long and tiresome process to get them all. Once you learn a monster's abilities, you use them by selecting "Rage", which makes Gau do nothing but attack as that monster would. This means when he's the last one alive and has 20 HP left and you've got many pheonix downs and a few megalixirs, you can't do anything about that.


The rest of the characters seem comparitively underpowered by comparison, but you can tweak them to make them indispensible.

Terra doesn't have any special abilities for a good long time, and when you finally get it, it's not very good. Her ability is called Morph and she changes into an alternate form which multiplies her magical powers. If you give her lots of black magic she'll pack a punch, but she won't stay in this form for long unless you use it often.

Celes's ability is to absorb enemy spells and convert them into MP. In this sense she is the ultimate defense against magic enemies, and as such should be crafted to best take advantage of this. With an ever replenishing store of MP, she can cast very powerful spells often. However, she has to do this when NOT defending against magic attacks.

Locke is a thief. Like all thieves he has decent attack power and is fast. He can also steal things. He also has two Relics that make his steal ratio go up and do damage when he steals. This sounds very good, but if you have him in a party with Cyan, Sabin and Edgar, he suddenly seems weak by comparison. He can be stuck in the back row since the damage from Mug isn't affected by row and given more defense oriented spells to compensate, and steal often, since it's really his most unique and special talent.

Relm is what's called a "Pictomancer". Her "sketch" command essentially replicates a monster's attack. Using this you can do very powerful moves back at an opponent such as Bad Breath. You won't be able to pick which attack is used though, and there's another major problem. Most enemies frequently attack in ways that they're strong in. Fire enemies use fire attacks, which would only heal them if used against them. The fake moustache relic changes her "Sketch" command to "Control", which is just what it sounds like. You pick a monster, then pick which attack you want it to use, then you pick the target to use it on. This bears the same problem, but it lets you be more selective in how you use her. It's a very cool idea on paper, but she's difficult to see as a great asset in battle. She has a few other saving graces, but they're almost spoilers...


And what's the valuable lesson to learn here? Apparently it's that chicks are the least useful people of all..... Oh Square, you so crazy...