“Blackguard” is a perfectly good English word; it basically refers to a thief or cad with no honor.
I’ve been in the Underworld and putting off the Sealed Cave for a while, but I’m really loving this game. I think the lead character thoughts on the menu screen are nifty and fun, and I’ve enjoyed the voice acting and updated translation as well - playing older versions, there have been points in the story where I’ve been unsure as to a character’s tone, but these additions have helped me a lot.
Also, the dancing girls are a LOT more fun this time around. Make sure to talk to the one in Baron after Cecil becomes a paladin; it made me laugh out loud!
I’m now in the lunar underground (Last Dungeon) and seriously… this game is hard!!!
I can barely defeat a Blue Dragon and I’m level 60-66
it pisses me off… but since it’s the best game of all time, I’ll grind some more and win this…
I had to keep resetting in the Lunar Subterrane myself - the giant red robots (don’t remember the name) were wicked hard. With the older versions, I just about always just slugged through any fight, but I really have to concentrate on using buffs. I didn’t realize what a nice thing a dualcast-omnicast enemy berserk/blink could be sometimes until I got the Red Dragons to stop using beam attacks!
Apparently the dragons (among other things) were souped up for this version for the sake of giving them tails to give to the tail collector for Onion equipment.
Getting harder, I guess. I got whooped by random encounters three times in the Tower of Zot 
Ice Storm x2 is enough for most characters to bite the dust, then one regular to finish Cecil.
Also, the last three boss fights have degenerated to Cecil: Cura, Cecil: Attack (Cecil: Hermes Sandals if I have any) because the other characters simply aren’t durable enough. (Exception: Kain remained alive during the Barbariccia fight… because he diverted all attacks to everyone else by jumping.) Countering with all party kill spells, gotta love them.
Either I’m doing something wrong, or my “Grind Cecil to level 20 after becoming a paladin ASAP”-policy just wasn’t right. Maybe I should grind my weakest members to at least the third weakest character’s level?
… and I just got whooped by Calabrena in two turns after the combination. Physicals were insta-kills after the all-target spells by the regular dollies.
I still need to finish this game. I’m in the Giant of Babil right now, but I haven’t been playing a lot since I keep getting distracted by other games (FFTA2, Tales of the Abyss, and Soma Bringer). Embarrassingly enough, I got my 1st game over in the Sealed Cavern by 2 Chimeras…got bombarded by Flame attacks and it toasted the party.
Yeah, you must be doing something wrong. I’ve been able to beat every boss with very few problems. Granted, I’m using a guide, but the basic strategy isn’t hard to figure out (Debuff boss, Buff party, figure out what boss counters, attack). Also, augment abilities rock, especially Counter, Draw Attacks, Cry, and Dualcast. Twincast also gets a mention because you can cast Ultima if both Cecil and Rosa use it.
Wait. Debuff bosses? Are you serious? You can actually land Silence/Blind/Poison/etc? As for Buffs, I can’t see any serious difference after Shelling&Protecting the party. (Calabrena stomp was reduced from ~1000 to 950ish, which isn’t quite enough to prevent the backrow from being insta-killed) Haste will be VERY useful once I actually get it. Hermes Sandals have saved many a Cecil-Solo moment.
And all the augments I have at the moment are Auto-Potion, Counter and Draw Attacks. Gave counter to Cecil, Auto-potion to Rosa (Maybe now you’ll stay alive after multi-party elemental spells?), don’t know about Draw attacks yet, is it an active or a passive ability? And, uh, Cecil & Rosa using twincast? I thought it was unique to those two little Mysidians… no using cry either, since the kid left the party :<
Vagrant Story reference: Rydia says “he means to die” when Golbez becomes self aware in the giant of bab-il
Other than that, the game is tough, but its not that bad. I wiped the floor with Zeromus at level 75 and I gained 10 levels in the last dungeon without grinding, just mapping it out. I also did not have fast talker or dual cast. The bosses have specific ways that are supposed to be done and when you do it , it goes smoothly. Same with big monsters. If dragons cause you problems, cast stop on them.
I am so frustrated now - you’re supposed to get the Treasure Hunter augment when you map everything 100%, and apparently I’m missing something. I know it’s not any of the towers, because I was very careful to complete those… so now I’m stuck going back through every dungeon to figure out that 1% that’s probably lurking somewhere. This sucks. 
God, I had that happen too I’m going to go through the rest of the Namingway Quest to get the Zero Encounter augment, or whatever it’s called, before I start going back through dungeons. Now I just need to get a Rainbow Pudding
Wait. Debuff bosses? Are you serious? You can actually land Silence/Blind/Poison/etc?
Depends on the boss. Slow almost always seems to work, and is your best bet. Once the Twins leave, you can get Twincast, and if you gave them augments, you can get Cry, Bluff, and Dualcast. Cry is quite useful, especially near the end of the game. It really speeds up battles. Dualcasting with Rosa is also fun.
Draw Attacks is a passive ability that makes all enemies attack the character with it equipped until they die or when they use an attack that attacks everyone. Very Very useful for Cecil, generally because he’s has the highest level, the highest HP(except maybe for Yang) and the highest Defense. It’s especially useful when combined with Counter. Even more so if you get Kick.
I’m almost finished my 300 quests in FFTA2 (god, I can barely believe it…) and I’m just going to tackle Brightmoon Tor to satisfy the completionist within. After that, I’m getting started on this game. I’m not a big fan of what I’ve heard about augments… putting it on one person and never being able to take it off, in particular. Any tips about how to most effectively use these?
There was an area in the UndergroundWaterway that I somehow completely missed, so now I’m back on track. 
Currently working on the Rainbow Pudding… ugh.
With augments, I think the trick is to put them on the person who can best use it and not to waste really good ones on characters that aren’t in your final party. Still, you have to burn through some in order to get good ones from those particular characters coughYangcough. The previous post about Cecil having Draw Attacks+Counter+Kick demonstrates that well - you can do a lot of damage in not a lot of time while sparing some of your weaker characters harm. Another good example is giving Rosa Dualcast and Omnicast; always good to cast one cure spell, even better to be able to cast a cure spell and then single target spells like Haste or Holy on all targets! Since the New Game + option is present, you can give augments in a subsequent playthrough to different characters and really toughen them up.
Augments aren’t a bad idea. They work pretty well. When you put an augment on a char, you can’t swap it to another char. That also doesn’t mean that it is always active on the character.
You have 5 slots for stuff like magic, attack, items and extra skills and more augments than you know what to do with. You have an abilities window in which you choose what 5 skills are available to you (white magic, cover, black magic, attack, items, etc) and what skills you want people to use on auto.
Every skill on a character that leaves your party in the game is an augment, like kick. If you want to get the augments a character has when he leaves, you have to give him x number of augments before he leaves. As I said, the vast majority aren’t that useful so its not a big deal.
The big ones are draw attacks, counter, kick and level up on Cecil, dualcast and hp+50% on rosa and fast talker and mp+50% on rydia. Everything else is much not important, except maybe Phoenix.
The only thing that is really annoying is that you have to know a bit in advance how much to give to who to get what, though really that boils down to “give almost every augment you get to chars that leave so you get their good ones when they do”.
I couldn’t stand FFTA2. Urgh…
I sympathize with Vicki about the 1% thing. That happened to me once, but I was able to find it. There were a few times in the game where 1% was missing and I had to go to a completely random place in the map to get it completed (Bahamut’s cave and the subterranean cave near Kaipo to name a couple).
OK, that makes a bit more sense, though it’s entirely counterintuitive.
I’m quite enjoying FFTA2 - certainly more than its older cousin. Which isn’t to say it couldn’t be trimmed by about 20 hours, but the same could have been said about Dragon Quest VIII. It’s no FFT, but then it’s not meant to be.
So here’s a question: Who played through the whole game on active? (Note: If you didn’t change any settings the game defaults to Wait.) I feel like maybe Active is not a very good choice for this game…