FFII (continued)

Instead of jumping right back into my game last night, I instead tried to more carefully assess what I wanted my characters to be able to do and then I went and leveled those abilities a bit. After a couple hours I had gotten level three Fire/Blizzard/Thunder on Yorik and Nicole, I got my cure up to 3 on everyone, and 4 on Ikorid, and I started to train Ikorid in swords instead of axes because it just seems like the end game best weapons are always swords or spears in FF games, and Nicole already had a spear. I also made Yorik my Blink bitch, Ikorid has Protect and Nicole has Shell leveled. After getting a bunch of other Tomes leveled (spells) and a lot more MP and some HP, I set out to continue my game.

This was a bit more of a frustrating process than the typical power level where you could just go get exp and gain levels. I had to specifically cast and do certain things every fight, and sometimes I'd just sit there hitting my own party with spells and attacks and curing them, just so they would level my spirit/magic/mp/hp in the process of learning. A bit annoying, but I don't think any of the other FF games have a system like this, thankfully...

I picked up a few more weak characters through the plot, some severely useless, some ok, and continued on. Still no sign at all of Lokeir, but Nicole recognized the voice of the evil Dark Knight who's killing everyone for the empire... is it possible...? As I progressed, I was not surprised but satisfied when I entered a higher level dungeon and picked up two awesome weapons, one a spear.. one a sword... lol. Gifted with the new Winged Sword, Ikorid really started to lay into people, surpassing Yorik, who's been my very solid Monk type heavy hitter all the way. However, one of the reasons also is that I discovered umm, that I could dual wield weapons... Even Nicole crits for some big numbers, but lately I've just been abusing the shit out of her Teleport spell. Used normally, it takes the party out of the dungeon, used on a mob, 1 shot kill. After much use, it's now at level 7, my highest spell, and in a crowd of like 9 mobs, it's kinda cool when she kills 7 before they even get a swing in (due to her high agility, she always goes first). I even killed three bosses with it last night... BROKEN!

As far as plot goes, I think I'm definitely past the middle of the game, maybe nearing the end. On a side note, I had my first hint of the Dragoon class, and saw my first wyvern, who died shortly there after, the last wyvern in the world except for the egg I saved; might a wyvern come to aid me in the end...?

Also of note, I hadn't thought of it before, but this game is the origin for weapon levels in FFXI, where you had to level up each weapon independently to be able to hit harder, more accurately and use abilities. By the looks of it, XIV is purely a weapon job class system, probably similar to Tactics where all abilities are learned through the use of weapons. I look forward to that, I really enjoyed that class system in Tactics.

It's off to Vegas for the weekend so I don't know if I'll make any progress but I'll bring it along anyway for the plane/airport, and maybe those dull moments in the room where I'm bored waiting for people and don't feel like losing more money gambling or watching Nascar (gag).