Tips for the Difficulty

[Crescent_Mouse]

Any advice? I'm pretty bad at these types of games but still enjoy them. And as someone who had troubles with the original game. Does anyone have advice? I'm having troubles even grinding because the random encounters are really tough for me. (Especially one where I got 6 of those really tough turtles!) I'm about level 6, although Cloud is level 5 and it's really showing. I just got the stone from the mysterious stranger    and learned about what has happened at the castle! If anyone can help, thanks!

[AzariaWaters]

Oh, I completely agree with you. I, too, am at a very low level and would like to get the hang of it as soon as possible. I myself do it very hard, so tell me who knows what useful.

[BostonGoodman]

Oh, how I understand you. The game is really hard to master. But I think that's what the excitement is all about. In today's world, for the most part, the gamer community has been replaced by a younger generation that doesn't remember how complex games are. They are used to dumb arcade games like CSGO. And don't say I haven't played, so I can't judge. I played CSGO for about four months. Then a week ago, I sold all my skins and deleted the game. Yeah, it was fun at first, but then it got boring. And the constant toxicity of schoolchildren did not save the situation. I ended up overpowering myself in trying to understand such popularity of CSGO, but I couldn't.

[Nyzer]

The randoms were not properly balanced, so they swing pretty wildly between being way too hard and fighting a single Beastmaster with no monsters. Spend some time looking around for some randoms which are doable.

Everyone's favorite random battle - not for being piss easy, but for actually being fun - is one at Bariaus Hill in which the player walks in on a conflict between some Knights & Chemists, and a group of Bombs. Some of the human enemies head off to fight the Bombs, while the player has a few that go immediately for their group.

Other than that, the main general tip I'd give would be to get at least half of the Five out of their base jobs ASAP. Ramza, Cloud, and Snake would be the first ones I'd say should move on, because they arguably start with their most vital skills, and the rest of the skills they can learn tend to leave them stuck in their narrow niche for a while. Dante still kind of stays in his niche (if you keep learning Swordmaster skills), but the extra range on his other skills makes them quite worthwhile to learn. Link, meanwhile, has a very varied skillset, and his Songs are amazing.

Character job combinations I recommend for everyone are:

• Ramza as a Wizard or Dimensionalist, because his high Faith, Female MA, Encourage, and lack of weapon-required skills make him the easiest choice for a mage. His usefulness as a Priest is a bit limited though, since Wish, Cheer Up, and Altima already give him basic healing coverage, overlapping a lot of the use of White Magic.
• If you want to improve Cloud's offensive capability, make him a Rogue. Rogues can naturally use swords, their skills don't cost MP, and one of his greatest weaknesses is arguably his low Move and generally low attack range with Limit - so a job with one more Move and Move +1 is a great way to shore that up. Alternatively, if you want a tankier Cloud, make him a Priest. Hammers work with Limits, Regenerator is a top tier Reaction, and he can start fights by using Barrier on himself. I don't recommend using Priest Cloud as your main healer, because his low Limit range means he'd have to be casting from the front lines, but there's nothing stopping you from picking up Full-Life and Esuna after getting Barrier just in case.
• Link, on the other hand, makes a great main healer. If you bring Equip Projectiles to the Priest job, he can use his Arrow skills quite well. Even without it, his Songs are amazing, and he can go between using Saria's Song to restore MP to multiple allies and using White Magic as needed. But if you'd prefer a more offensive Link, Ranger is a solid choice. He can save his Arrows for elemental weaknesses, and rely on Venom Strike as his main attack.
• Throw Item Snake is incredibly good. Snake's unlearned base skills are not meant to be reliable game-changers, and most of his actual utility comes from being a speedy, high Move unit that can turn invisible and heal himself for free. If you haven't started relying on non-Items for healing and resurrection, it might sound insane to deliberately build a unit to primarily use Items, but once you break into Priest, Knight, and some more of Ramza's support skills, the feeling of never having enough Items goes away real fast. Also, Ethers and Saplings are very underrated here. An alternative support Snake is Monk Snake - his low Br will indeed weaken his punches, but the skillset itself is not affected by Br. You can also build a much tankier Snake by making him a Knight - with Find Cover and Smoke Break, he'll always at least be able to do something even with relatively low Move, never even mind how self-sufficient those skills make him. Or, finally, for a more offensive Snake, make him a Ranger. Venom Strike will very much balance out against Snake's naturally weaker damage.
• What you do with Dante really depends on the base skillset you want to go with. Swordmaster Dante makes for a great Knight. The range on Stinger and Round Trip easily make up for going with two low-Move jobs, and also allows him to be an emergency healer with Sacrifice or to give himself Reraise with Invigorate. The only real concern to that is that he can't restore his own MP, but between Ethers, Saplings, Regen, Regenerator, Encourage, Cheer Up, and Saria's Song, you should have no shortage of options for someone else to restore it for him. And it's worth it to have him as your primary big damage guy. Trickster Dante loses a lot of attack power as he's stuck with daggers in Chapter 1, but he gains the ability to fly across the battlefield, hit with 100% accuracy from range, sustain his HP & MP with Flipper, and even potentially Paralyze enemies. He works well with either Survival Skills (once again, using Poison to make up for weak damage output) or Item (as an emergency support unit). Gunslinger Dante is another high offense unit - he loses some power to run crossbows and bows, but Charge Shot and Gun Stinger both hit comparably hard to some of his Swordmaster skills, and he'll always be able to do ranged attacks for free, making him a good choice if you don't want to run any mana battery allies. Plus, since he's doing ranged attacks, you can also make up for that damage drop with Venom Strike. Or just make him tankier with Knight skills. Finally, there's the Royalguard. Going that route will tank Dante's attack range - but tank is the operative word here. Ultimate and Dreadnaught are basically alternatives of Snake's Smoke Break and Find Cover respectively, while Just Block and Royal Block allow him to boost his allies' defenses. This one's a bit harder to get a good build for, but Throw Item Royalguard Dante would be a fairly solid all around support unit, while a Royalguard Knight with Move +1 and Regenerator would be better able to keep up with enemies' movement as well as maintain his own MP.