I believe I'm halfway finished with Rydia's Tale.
Anyways, the dolls are more useful than I thought. If hopefully level alters the skill usage of the Jive command, it would make things nice.
The damned Wall monster seems to target Brena a lot. Brena's in the last slot. At the very least, that's an improvement from virtually all monsters attacking the middle slot (which Luca occupies).
I forgot to mention that the Calcabrena band also randomly casts Cura... as if Brena couldn't randomly do that on her own.
I think there was a point where the Calcabrena band didn't kill the stronger version of the rat with needles monsters - it retaliated with Needles... hmmm (I have to double check if that happened).
Jive is considered a magic attack... the Naga type monsters reacted to a non-damaging attack in kind with Slow.
"Magic" level notes:
Calca @ level 12 for 8 agility
Luca @ level 17 for 8 agility
Calca @ level 22 or something for 32 agility when equipped with the Clown's Clothes
The Horned equipment is technically evil. +3 STR with -3 INT and -3 SPR sucks. Not that Luca has a lot of Spirit, but that causes her to be crippled under Paralysis (the snake monsters will use that if you leave them alive long enough).
Battle Axe falls under the same evil... at least the Tomahawk does not (straight +5 STR).
Big Throw is essentially giving the "ignore row" ability to Luca's weapon. This allows for Luca to stay in the back row indefinitely if you wish. This is not a bad thing, considering she's a slightly weaker Cid clone, so the heavy armor is beneficial. Even then, it allows her to hit things in the monster's back row... which sometimes is your intended target.
Clown's Clothes > Warrior's Clothes. Despite the +20 STR crack that the Warrior Clothes provides, it neuters magic stats (-5 INT and -5 SPR). Clown Clothes gives +20 AGI for a major defensive improvement (and when you get to 32 AGI, magic evasion increase).
It seems like the developers did take some time to provide multiple options for the dolls. You could go with the classic route with the Angel's and Mage's Clothes to keep the dolls pro-magic/command based, or you could make the dolls offensive with the Warrior+Clown's clothes.
Mage's Clothes for Rydia for a nice boost (Gaia Gear has limited uses), +3 INT AND +3 SPR is good for her magic evasion.
The Healing Rod is a black wizard version of the Healing Staff, which does slightly stronger healing. 3x spell multiplier (rod) vs 2x spell multiplier (staff). Then again, you get better bonuses (+3 INT and +3 SPR vs... nothing). Somewhat lame, but needed.
There is some legit thought to balance in the game... now only if they redid the crappy goblin's spell (and its spell power).
In attempting to use the Go! Go! Calcabrena band vs the bats, it seems to still work vs them, despite Lightning absorption. It seems to lessen the damage to the bats with the elemental absorption to lightning. This is not a bad thing, but worth paying attention to.
There aren't that many TrapDoors (seems to be like 4?) - Half of them summon the Goblin Caption (or the Dark Goblins - usually the normal underground monster version) and the others summon Sorceresses. Unfortunately, the game (US version) seemed to not want to record their deaths in the Beastiary. I don't know why.
Racial compatibility with weapons is simply a 50% bonus, as noted earlier (used Mythril Knife vs Souls and Spirit). It's not that bad a nerf. It might be bad if there was elemental resistance applied. On average, doing +87.5% average additional damage, is close enough to doing double damage (+100%).
Small update before sleep:
My last save was made in the in-game time of 4:44, with 33333 gil. How nice!
Ice Rod got an INT boost (+3). Should have been done in the original game in the first place!
Tomahawk has the nifty ability to be back row friendly (ignore row). Unlike the original Dwarf Axe, it has the Wind elemental attribute! Great... someone figured to add this "feature".
It's been a long day, when you decide to prefer the Ruby Ring over the Iron Gloves. 2 defense vs 3 magic defense + pig resistance.... before adding the fact that 10% additional evasion is better than 0%. I don't think I've ever had to make such a decision like that ever...
Level 26-27 for Rydia and Luca Agility @ 16
A nice "feature" in TAY is to not see anticipated retaliation attacks while under statuses like piggy that would normally prevent the counter attack. For instance, seeing the Lilith not being able to Slap under Piggy or the Naga casting Slow under Mute... in the normal game, you would see the counter message. In this game, you miss it.
It seems to me that the port of FF4 could use some "cleanup". When Pollen can potentially dish 0 damage in FF4PSP (outside of the Sap affliction), the damage is highlighted in green. Although this is cosmetic, this is not displayed in TAY, where 0 damage is not highlighted in green. The same could be said for Osmose damage where the damage is highlighted in blue when 0 damage is applied (to self or to targets that have 0 MP like Kain).
Fortunately got 2 Cursed Ring drops, and the Mindflayer summon. Apparently, the Cockatrice appearances are difficult in the rare slot formation in the Sylph Cave....
The Mindflayer sucks... if your target is immune to Paralysis (or happen to be a boss), it automatically fails. When it does work, the summon is not too bad.
The Plate Armor really sucks. It is possibly the only armor that provides negative evasion (-10%). Sometimes, it is smarter to play with more evasion than boosting defense.
The Lightning Hammer attack (Rydia+Luca band) is very sweet. It's effective a combo of Thunder (the basic version) plus Luca's base attack (so spell power+attack power) and multiplied by 2. It seems to deal less damage if you have a higher magic defense though.
Bomb summon is da Bomb! Being able to target single monsters sucks, but it has the benefit of not causing a ruckus when you don't want it (see original CPU battle). It's definitely fire elemental, but I'm unsure of the spell power. It has been reported to be around 120, but I haven't had a chance to crunch the numbers. It's more powerful than Bio.. but it won't be more powerful than Firaga. It would've been nicer if the spell was non-elemental... At least damage spells are reliable (looking at you squid Mageflayer)...
Easily maxed out levels in just one long run (with the occasional leaving the dungeon initially, as it would've been nice as a save spot). Ended up with 2 High Potions left (started with 50, having bought 40 or so before heading there). Ended up with 2 at the very end.... This feels kinda like the Tower of Zot in my early FF4 gaming... where Potions were used quite a bit.
I don't know if racial resistances are working... but my initial thought is that the behavior may have been changed. Giants Gloves don't seem to help too much vs the Mad Ogres... My guess is that there may have been reduced accuracy or something. I have Luca in the back row, but that doesn't quite help matters.
Those Walls seems to target Rydia now, having lost the dolls. It is almost as if it has reverse row targeting (Luca is in the middle slot, Rydia in the top slot, both in back row).
Those Goblins... are the joke. I think the endurance part of the challenge dungeon is the focus.
Like Titan's final Quake attack on the characters, a lot of this is scripted spell scheming. Instead of reducing HP by a certain portion, it's reducing HP TO a certain percentage or value like with the Interlude's final battle with the machines. The intent is to put characters into critical to tell the story "accurately". The only issue is how the machines at the end of the Interlude have "hidden Edge" casting Blitz dealing TWICE as much damage as Edge normally would be able to. The math doesn't add up correctly... at least with the hidden Rydia with the underground Golbez battle in the original game, the damage isn't accurate to the Mist Dragon spell, but it's "accurate" to how much HP she should have when she gets back with the team if you base it on the spell data.
I like Luca better than Cid... just based on skills alone.
I need to get around to testing Mad Ogres vs Lightning Brain Buster...
Team Monk is simple... just let them all Kick the opponents to oblivion when monster # is greater than 2. Otherwise, you can just punch them into oblivion.
It's interesting to note that Kick falls under the Attack Power alteration stuff... which is technically true since Kick damage is literally based off of that. However, Focus is not highlighted as such.... I haven't tested it yet (since last I checked, that command dropped Yang's magic evasion to 0, which it is already), but I anticipate that it is affected by the Attack Power changes. Understandably it is not affected by Special Command changes...
Cover Counter (or was it Counter Cover) is probably affected by the Attack Power changes... since it is literally what it is (if anything, you should be seeing red in Yang's command list).
Chakra is affected by the Special Command moon stuff... and I think it might be loosely be based on Spirit (unsure, but will need further observation). It doesn't heal Paralysis from the damned TinyMages, but it does heal Blind from the damn butterflies. I will have to observe further for the other status affects (probably Poison is the only other one, since it is probably based off of FF5's !Chakra command).
Got testing done. Apparently, my initial thought of Magic Defense was wrong... since Lightning Brain Buster doesn't seem to affect the Mad Ogre's immense magic defense...
However, defense was the actual factor it seems. It didn't stop it from kicking the Purple Bavarios's ass. However, the damage was far weaker than a monster that had no weakness, but weak defense.
Also, Gradual Petrify is not healed by Chakra (and by extension, Stone, which is the final state - works like Gaia Gear resistance when you think about). The only reason why I believe Poison is healed by it is because Focus (as defined by the original game) is disabled under Poison status.
We have EVEN MORE themes now, but some old ones are gone...