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freshfeelingThis was originally played on August 5, 2018.
Starting out the merged world, it's one of those situations where the party is broken down in such a way that the game balance is thrown out for a bit. Thus, the start of the world is not particularly interesting gameplay-wise. Ninja and bard are a perfectly useful combo for things like the Antlion battle.
Speaking of ninja, it seems that I didn't update the sidebar image for this particular session, so now it's a memorial to Galuf.
The first actual point of interest was the first gargoyle battle. The nature of the battle is that you need to defeat both gargoyles at the same time - or nearly the same time - or they revive each other. Thus, the easiest strategy is to use multi-target attacks, and the one character I didn't have was my summoner. I used lots of ninja scrolls, but my strategy was nearly thwarted by Faris the monk automatically counter-attacking one of them!
Thankfully, I was able to sneak in a few punches before the revival cycle was able to take hold and win without much issue.
I had taken the opportunity to get the Chicken Knife from Moore, and Krile's damage using the Chicken Knife in her off-hand really accelerated the normal battles. I guess that was partly due to all of that grinding in the Barrier Tower. That, along with many enemies in the pyramid being vulnerable to Requiem, made this go pretty quickly. That said, there were some parts I intentionally chose to just leave alone, either because they didn't matter or because they'd be much easier with a summoner.
There's no boss in the pyramid, but the battle with Melusine happens pretty much immediately after. I had a false start when the battle was generally not going well and I realized what an asset it would be to start over with Reflect Rings equipped - her magic damage is rather potent.
Starting again with Reflect RIngs, she stayed in her fire-weak state for a rather long time. Krile threw Fire Scrolls, Faris tried to land defense-piercing critical hits, and eventually I just had Bartz attack with the Dancing Dagger to try and trigger a non-elemental magic attack (this did not end up happening). Amazingly, her first phase change took her into her physical-weak state which allowed everyone to pile on the damage. I chose to forego healing to see if we could seal the deal... and we did.
Our status at this point looked like this:
I went to the sealed castle thing near Kuza and realized of the twelve sacred weapons there were only three that had any chance to benefit us whatsoever: the Magus Rod, the Assassin Dagger, and Sasuke's Katana. So we got them all! Later, I realized I would want Apollo's Harp, too, but I would come back for that.
At this point we were in the open-world part of the game to go get whatever things we thought we would benefit from most. We headed to the Phantom Village, where pickups included the Thief Knife, the final piano tune, some endgame-ish quality armor, and two pairs of Hermes Shoes. As a spin-off of that trip, we got the Magic Lamp, the Mirage Vest and Syldra. I also stopped at the monster-in-a-box chest in Tule village and hold down the A-button and turbo to power up the Chicken Knife quite a bit more.
I decided to try out Odin. I didn't think this was a sure thing; Krile and Lenna had great damage options for this fight and I was arguably a bit overlevelled, but Bartz and Faris really had nothing significant to contribute at all. I thought it wouldn't happen when the high-powered Chicken Knife missed early in the fight! But it still worked out in roughly 41 seconds.
I got Bartz his last two bard songs, and then I cleaned up those treasures I had left behind in the pyramid. Having a full party and a ninja with a nearly full-powered Chicken Knife and Hermes Shoes made that a breeze. Lengthy! But a breeze.
I bought a third pair of Hermes Shoes since I had the money lying around after the pyramid and stopped there. I am thinking of doing all of the major dungeons, although they won't really do too much in terms of this party's efficacy.
