Final Fantasy 5 Four Job FiestaI did 375 since hey that sounds like a cool way to give me a balanced party.
<GILGABOT> And by "balanced", you mean "get the consistently worst job from every crystal".
Okay, that's not quite true, as Monk is not the worst probably, but still, check it out:
Monk, Berserker, Geomancer, Dancer
Earlygame was not a problem, Monk punches the Tule-Walse section of the game to death effortlessly (except Garula who mostly gets counterpunched instead). But from then on most every boss was a pain:
-Liquid Flame more like Liquid Pain, can't exploit the tornado form and the other two wear me down badly.
-Sandworm is ugh, I let the Berserker die and try to turtle with Charka and counters. Either I have bad luck or something is up with counter vs. Sandworm because it kicked in 0 times out of 9. Fight took over half an hour off the clock though I used emulator speedup to make it more palatable, mostly just me spamming Chakra until I gained enough HP I felt I could safely take a swing.
-Soul Cannon was a terrifying damage race, luckily on the winning run only the Berserker got hit with Old, I still used both Hi-Potions I'd acquired so far and four Elixirs.
-Titan and Manticore are just slug and prey. I beat Titan first time but not Manticore.
-Purobolos were awful. Only boss I had two resets on. Really did not have the ability to slug them down fast enough for Self-Destruct chains to not screw me over. And god forbid I miscount and trigger MT Arise, which I certainly do at least once.
-Bridge Gilgamesh was also pretty awful.
Not awful were Byblos and Adamantoise, both of whom Geomancer bailed me out against.
After that I got storebought Hi-Potions, and I could actually do something besides hope to outslug things with my not-very-good damage. The last three required bosses of W2 were still difficult; Atomos was a photo finish, Seal Guardians a lot of annoying HP counting which Berserker naturally makes even harder (one reset, on the second run I finally saw Death Sickle actually work against a boss for once), and Exdeath is definitely trickier when you only have three people to respond to his various moves with the appropriate mix of Hi-Potions and Phoenix Downs. This is the type of team that almost makes me understand why someone might farm Reflect Rings (four is still a big waste of time, just protecting one PC would have trivialized the second stage; I decided not to bother at all).
And then World 3, while not easy (both Gargoyles and Melusine were a pain in the ass to get things started), I'm actually rather proud of.
So this is where, after suffering for over half of its existence, Dancer suddenly becomes worthwhile. Storebought Lamia's Tiara and common-steal Rainbow Dresses from Phoenix Tower mean Sword Dance is now 50% in the hands of a Dancer (or in my case, Geomancer as well). At first I do Barehanded Dance which leads to ~5000 damage Sword Dances or so. Okay, cool cool. But at a certain point I think bigger: Rune Axe. While it's not a particularly special weapon in Berserker's hands, Dancer has a real magic stat. Sword Dance with this does anywhere from 4000 to 9999, depending on my level and the target.
Geomancer does the same thing with Assassin Dagger + Lamia's Tiara. In the final dungeon I'm lucky enough to get a Rune Chime (1/16 drop, from admittedly a very common enemy) and suddenly wow, they've got a high 4-digit Sword Dance of their own. Equip Ribbon Monk becomes mostly the item-user at this point, Berserker is still Berserker.
Anyway for bosses, the most notable ones are past the start are Omniscient (I do the Reflect Ring Mage Masher thing), Apanda (physicals still not really the way to go against Byblos mark 2, but I prevail), Catastrophe (Earthquake one-shots the Dancer and leaves me scrambling, fortunately he decides to be nice the rest of the way), and Twintania (not hard, but notable because I need to kill the Berserker off so she doesn't trigger Tsunami counters... and because FLIRT shuts down the Gigaflare form. YES). Neo Exdeath is a big of a slog (I switch my Geomancer to back row Equip Ribbon, this might have been a mistake) with only the Dancer doing really big damage and only randomly, but Grand Cross is mostly a joke with three Ribbon users and I can survive Almagest with two PCs at least. (Possibly should have made it three with HP+30 on Geo? I was expecting to kill the Almagest part faster than I did, some bad Sword Dance luck there.)
No resets in World 3! Final level was 37. No grinding, but not much running, and the only significant source of exp I skipped was the Great Trench.
Class notes:
Monk has a good World 1, a decent enough World 2, and becomes basically useless besides an HP sponge in World 3 as weapons suddenly spike up in power. Not that HP sponging is nothing, ensured I survived Almagest for instance. For their abilities, Focus is okay (33% DPS increase compared to physicals, also triggers fewer counters), Chakra is rarely marginally useful in W1 due to being better than Potion, and HP+30% is a nice little durability push but a very expensive investment.
Berserker is the worst, and I drew no classes which can really support it (e.g. Knight for Two Hands, mages for W3 Gaia Hammer / Rune Axe). Bosses like Sandworm, Soul Cannon, and Exdeath are made challenging by their incompetence. They have bulk at least. Their speed is wretched; not only is it bad on paper, but something about the way berserk is handled makes it even worse on turn 1. The entire rest of my team instantly doubled Berserker after all got Hermes Sandals. Equip Axe is nice on someone with a magic stat.
Geomancer is a slave to what Gaia is doing at a given time. Useful against Byblos, Adamantoise, and in a few dungeons such as Ronka and Drakenvale. Vaguely acceptable in some other dungeons due to providing magic damage which my party otherwise lacked. And sometimes just a near-useless knife fighter. For skills, Gaia's the only useful one, and struggled on my team because unlike real magic skillsets it doesn't improve Magic Power when set, and the rest of my team had average to terrible magic.
Dancer is mostly just bad in World 1-2, you Dance because why not it's better than physicals on average (especially against the evasive). The W3 equips really change them, suddenly they're a damage cannon, albeit one with awful HP which does hold them back, especially because they usually want to be in the front row (though Thor's Hammer gave a nice backrow option). Equip Ribbon is nice for stat boosts and stat immunity, Dance was useful on Geomancer after Lamia's Tiara, Flirt is useful against Twintania.
