

Even more annoying that a very good character can only be recruited by this 11th hour joiner and so unless you plan it carefully, you may not have easy access to means of leveling this character either. It makes party planning a bit tougher when you know you're going to have to keep one slot open for them. My two biggest gripes at the moment are these: 1) I really hate the fact the game forces an 11th hour ranger into your team at the end to get to the final dungeon. So I'm hoping I can fill out more of my weapon tech list since I'm missing a skill or three with each weapon type. I discovered I never finished this one optional dungeon, and I'm grateful for it because the boss of the place has the potential to be an Asura, which is one of the best enemies in the game to spark techs with.

Despite all this, I cleared up a few side missions I forgot about and I'm starting to play around with building up my magic. Otherwise, you can't access his castle for some dumb reason. Sadly, I learned far too late that I've locked myself out of Katarina's Golden Ending, because I apparently needed to have Mikhail in my final team, but he's only available for recruitment for a short time when Bunei attacks Loanne. But I took this in stride because I was seriously having second thoughts about a lot of the decisions I was making. The problem was that I hadn't saved in hours (which is why I hate save anywhere systems, because I will forget to save) so all of my endeavors for the evening were lost. Not helped that I forgot to restore my health before heading in, so I was low on TP/MP so I lost pretty good. Anyway, I went after the Fire Sinistral and got destroyed for my efforts because he has that obnoxious perma self-immolation shield that does insane damage if I try to attack him with short range melee. I'm a little too late in the game to be trying to build an endgame team, especially since my one goal is to tackle the final boss in his true form because I guess I'm just a masochist like that. Romancing SaGa 3 - Wasted half my evening, and then sort of made up for it? I did a bunch of things and ended up switching around my team a bit, which proved to be a bad idea. It's pretty potent, but I am annoyed with the casting times for a lot of spells.

I feel my only real complaint so far with skill acquisition in this game is that once again, magic is more of a chore than it needs to be. I'm now at the annoying part where I need to keep an eye out for all the rare materials needed to level up the stuff. I'm making tier XIII stuff at this point and I'm pretty sure I maxed out the Blacksmith ranking. I also feel like I'm running out of gear to earn tech skills from. I did manage to recruit the mayor from a small town near Urpina's kingdom and he's another Club user and dressed like a fruity Renaissance nobleman, with the page boy haircut and everything. I'm hoping this will net me this particular player character, because I've read she's pretty good. So of course I'm ignoring that and helping her now break some jars. This one NPC I think I can recruit is also in the area looking for this witch and is harassing a fisherman who keeps telling Urpina the girl is in fact the witch and not to listen to her. The only creepy part was spending the night had Urpina wake up to find the castle in ruins and in the midst of a graveyard. We meet her at this old castle that is rumored to be home to a witch, but the girl has been super nice to the team. The other quest involves the party saving a young lady from a flock of carrion birds. One quest involves gathering offerings for a Beast Spiritual, though I'm having issues finding the second material. Instead I'm doing two smaller quests in the region where the cult kept trying to summon an Infernal. I didn't quite finish this one, but I'll come back to it. I returned to the far north where I reforged the Godslaying Saw and started a mining venture where I got to make mines in the area, but it seems to come at the cost of destroying all of the natural magical landmarks in the area. SSG - Mainly spent my time leveling up my side team while doing side missions.
