Bravely Default II

So I picked up the game today and readjusted my strategy for dealing the mobs in the ruins. I'm not sure if it was the best startegy but it worked well enough to get me through some bad positions. At least up until I caught up to the spoony bard that ran off.



He's pretty salty that he got the boot and challenges us to combat. I forgot to cap it but he showed up with a group of monsters. How he got them to work for him is pretty much never mentioned or drawn attention to. He starts the fight by spamming Brave to buff his party. I pretty wait it out the buff timer and nuke it down with Fira. I couldn't get it pictured here, but one he was alone I found out he can counter attack any white or black magics cast with sleep.



This pretty much did nothing but slow down the fight for me. At about a quarter of his HP remaining I realized it was a solved fight as I had too much redunant healing access for him to ever threaten a party wipe anymore. So it dragged on for a while until I finished it.



After which we get to see Bernard be a dick to the cat girl who he apparently picked off of the streets.





Prince goes back on his own and I decide to call it there. I was kind of annoyed by the boss fight more than anything. I could have reset at any point and equipped a sleep immunity item but I wanted to push through with at least learning how he works and seeing if I could do it first try.

I was surprised to have what looks like an optional area this early in the game. Though the warp point and save point make me think we'll be returning later. I also found this tree that blocks my way which is a really thinly veiled way of saying not yet. At least put rock there instead so it makes more sense.



So we come up against the evil advisor who decides to take matters into his own hands by trying to beat the shit out of the party himself. A commendable, but fruitless effort as I just turn him into a jobber.



Just like in V, our cool old guy character self-sacrifises to buy us time. Though this time our villain looks like Ansem from KH1.

Darkness is the heart's, true essence.

Amusingly in the next town, we find a not-Y'shtola from the critcally aclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV now-

Still cute though, even if she's not as spicy as Y'shtola.

I tried the next dungeon out and got bodied enough in fight that I actually needed to retreat. Mostly because the earth elementals can spam Stonra. The damage isn't terribly bad, but more than one is a real problem as the damage does stack up fast enough and the elemental's HP range(rand encounter seems to have a very variable max HP range) and high enough defenses make taking them down in one go difficult. I may need to step up to -ra level spells already. Wild that I'm doing this in chapter 1, but I suppose Hard Mode requires it. I made sure to get Black/White mage to 5 for everyone to get acceess to the time of day passive for mp recovery, so going a step further isn't that big of an ask. I'll just to devise an efficent grinding setup for outside of it and do that JP grind. I think the power difference will make up for it. Really glad I got everyone Star Pendants- the 500 max HP they're providng are the only reason these fights are survivable.

Fucking ecstatic to be wrong. It looks like I might've just not found the right setup for it until I started playing today. At least for healing, dual wielding with staves does make it more than worthwhile. Offensive magic not so much yet but I have hope.

Started playing again today. This time not with the intention of story progression but to start experimenting with game mechanics to figure what actually is a good idea with the tools I have on hand. The first order of business for me was the weapon profiencey system.

A class breaks up weapon categories(and shields) into types and assigns each one a grade. The grades from best to worst are S>A>B>C>D>E. The grade associated with a weapon type provides a small multipler to the weapons offensive stats plus healing power. Freelancer, the class that has Cs in every weapon type you think would just be average at everything but that is incorrect. C actually means (according to my testing) that offensive statistics are reduced to 88% effectiveness, give or take an extra 1-2%. So Freelancer is actually not good with most weapons.

See the table at the bottom if you're curious..

C rank is probably where I would put using a weapon as barely acceptable and anything else is pretty much never touch it. An interesting difference between it and FFV, where you either could use a type of equipment or can't. Next thing I tried was dual wielding which ended up being very unusual, but at least easy to sum up. To start with, dual wielding any weapon aside from staves and shields first gives you the stats of the weapon with superior power, which we will call the primary weapon. The weaker weapon, which we will call the off-hand weapon, grants only in the ball park of 15-25% of its offensive stats. Off-hand weapons do not seem to benefit from proficency ranks better than B, but they will account for ranks worse than B. So in some cases it can make you overall worse at fighting. There are potential exceptions though.

It seems that defensive stats apply 100% of their value even in the off hand. So theoretically a weapon with great defensive stats could make it worth while. Another scenario is if you can reliable hit weaknesses. Hitting weakness increases damage by 30% according to the game, so that can be worthwhile. I probably wouldn't do it however if I lost more than 10% power however. I haven't encoutner any, but it stands to reason that weapons that have on-hit effects could potentially be powerful as well.

Now for staves. Staff + anything other than a shield or another staff removes almost all the granted Magic Attack and Heal Power it grants. Using shields doesn't seem to incurr any type of dual wielding penalties. Theoretically, if such a staff existed that have competitive physical attack power then I think staves could potentially be the best weapon type in the game. I bet at least one exists somewhere but I'm still in the very beginning of the game.

Probably my biggest criticism so far is that magic is pretty much not worth using without the magic power from a staff. Where as in FFV giving someone a !White, !Black, !Summon, or !Gaia increased their magic to a specific level BDII doesn't do that. Not even prociencies tranfer over so at least early on you can't mix magic and physical. You either do one or the other.

I've got real mixed feeling on how the game is so far, but I'm still more than early enough in the game that this could easily change.

Oh yeah, buy a set of star pendants. They give out 500 Max HP which is a hilariously stupid amount of HP for this part of the game. Probably best in slot for a while.

Started Bravely Default II on hard mode on the whims of a friend who wanted to see my opinion on it. Almost positive it's because I'm such a big fan of Final Fantasy V. The default name being Seth amused me so I decided to stick with it. Opening was kind of slow but I pushed on through up to the first boss. Right before of switch I swiched to JP voices because i found myself annoyed with the EN dub. I nearly get filtered here. I didn't heed the words of warning from the game itself that I should be default to stock actions before acting. This was because I was pretty good at hitting enemies on the overworld meaning I almost always started battles with an action stocked up already but I digress. Anyway, I nearly got bodied but I managed to pull through only because I kitted out smartly enough and figured out that I needed mass burst damage to outdamage the healing that was being done by one of them. She's kind of hot, so she gets a pass.

After that, I started really looking at the effects of dual wielding on statistic compared to equipping shields. Unfortunately, stats are about as vague as FFV so I feel like I can't really tell how significant the effects of these might be in the long run. One thing that is clear though is that dual wielding does have massive downsides. Not only are weapons heavier than most shields I have available, but the effects seems vary significantly based on the weapon. Dual wielding staves at this point seems to be a terrible idea as it demolishing the normal bonuses to magic and healing power the staff provides. Dual wielding staves seems to do fuck all too. Though there I can't tell if profiencey grades of a class affect the statistics provided or not. At this point in the game I think the only advantage of dual wielding is getting access to another weakness to hit. The damage bonus for striking weakness is only 1.3x but switching weapons at the start of a turn is a free action.

Debating on whether or not I should hit up GameFAQs to see if there's a battle mechanic guide. I've played enough of FFV to know that exploiting math can let you get away with a lot of silly shit.

And I enjoy mathematical buffoonery.