HIKINEET'S PROFILE

author=Dragnfly
The character art is great, using MV's fantastic face generator. Man I love that thing. 100x better than VXA's to be sure. None of the characters here look garish or bland. They look pretty normal like you'd see in any other modern school setting.

Eh, I wasn't fond of the bloodied faces though. Like the first two girls are understandable but why is the blue-haired girl also covered in the stuff if she had no part in the butchering? And you don't even meet the fourth one until way later in the mansion. Like, what was she doing that got her stained in blood?

I did perfectly fine with MP conservation but that's because I bought Bagged Lunch (only the basic version) which heals 5 MP to your whole party and is more money efficient than a Spirit. You'll only need a Spirit if you run out of MP during a battle. Also, once you get the Whomp (which hits all enemies with a normal physical attack) that character essentially spends 0 MP if you just use its skill. You can just swap that axe to someone who ran out of MP if it comes down to it.

About the strategy used to defeat monsters not really changing... well, you're right. There aren't many unique skills in truth which means you will mostly be doing the same thing in each boss battle. Debuff them, buff yourself, heal when necessary. Not that that's a bad thing since that's commonplace in RPGs. I suppose the real issue is that you see too many of the "classics" (Breaker/Sweep/Bash/Sunder/Parry/Hamstring). You're hankering for more out-of-the-box tactics to let you approach a battle from a different angle. It doesn't help that once you know how to beat a certain set of enemies, you'll always be able to beat it (so long as you always have optimal HP/MP anyway).

As for status effects, well, you have the Cleanse spell, don't you? Granted, I suppose you would want to conserve your MP. It's worth using if you got double-status (poison/blind) on a character though. You actually get plenty of antidotes from chests. Though if you're really that bothered by snakes poisoning you or imps blinding you, give everyone a dagger and have three people quick stab a snake to kill it before it strikes.

I admit that you will almost always be afflicted with a status until you get augments to give you resistance (The Well has one which resists everything). Fortunately for you, paralysis is one that is a 50/50 which gives it a chance of being a wasted move. One boss was designed with moves to incapacitate so you'll probably complain about being stunned so much even though that's what makes it even threatening at all.

And about Hit/Miss ratio, I think it's more your annoyance at missing that makes you think that missing happens frequently enough. You have the means to buff your evasion and/or blind your enemies later on so it's not like the player is the only one who can take advantage of this.

As for items, you won't need to buy Spirits or the remaining ailment cures til Zone 4. Bagged Lunches and HP Pots will carry you all the way there. Souls, while they seem useful, are a waste of money even if you enjoy the insurance they provide. Besides, you'll find some free ones in chests and the basic version just isn't worth it since it only revives with 1 HP. You won't be dying except against bosses if you're properly stocked with HP Pots to keep your HP up.

Late-game, you'll get spell scrolls which cast one-time at no MP cost. They're actually not worth buying since they're slightly weaker than the actual spell(s) (that staves give you). You might as well buy an actual staff if you have the money to spend on scrolls, am I right? Though you can purchase element-more scrolls when you're in the final zone if you got nothing else to spend your gold on considering the end-game staves don't have the 'more' spells.