I’ve only ever written about secondary jobs for two of the characters i.e. Ophilia and H’aanit because as I played, I realised what the rest of the characters have as secondary jobs aren’t so crucial to me. In the end, I gave Therion the Warrior job but was that the best or the most ideal? I wouldn’t say so. But I like my Ophilia having the secret job, Sorcerer, as it made her almost invincible since she has access to all elemental attacks (x3) and an additional bow as her weapon. Her ability to regenerate HP and SP every turn also made her the strongest non-physical member of my team. So, I would strongly recommend that.
D also made me realise that each character can change different secondary jobs and still have access to the passive skills they already have learned. This means, if Ophilia takes the scholar secondary job and learns the passive skill Vim and Vigor, which regenerates a small amount of her HP after every action, even if she later switches to other secondary jobs, she can still be equipped with that passive skill. This knowledge changed my strategy quite a bit, so you may want to take note.
Ultimately, I find that while you do have 4 characters each time, you should really view your team as a mostly 3-member team since you’ll have to switch one of them out to play other characters’ stories. And no prize for guessing who my first choices are, but they’re H’aanit, Therion and Ophilia.
If you’ve played the game for a while now, you’d have realised that the recommended levels for each chapter aren’t to be trusted. If the recommended level is 22, you’ll be ripped apart if you attempt the chapter at level 22. So, below is the strategy I adopted which made most of the game a breeze for me.
Here’s the strategy: Decide on the first character whose chapter 2 you are going to play and have them on your team + the 3 main characters and level all your characters up to the recommended level + 10. This means, if it recommends level 22, make sure all your characters are at level 32 before you take on the story.
When you are going to attempt the next character’s chapter 2, go ahead and swap that character in + your 3 main characters and continue to level that new character up till their chapter’s recommended level + 10. So, if the recommended level is level 24, go ahead and level them up to level 34. The benefit to this strategy is that, having your 3 members already at a higher level (32 in this case), makes it possible for you to bring the weaker characters to fight harder monsters, thus, speeding up their leveling up process. Repeat this for all characters and by the time you finish chapter 2 of all 8 characters, your main characters would be at level 40+ or even 50 when chapter 3 only requires your characters to be at level 30+.
When playing chapter 3, just grind the characters whose story you are playing to about level 40, and by the middle of chapter 3, your main characters would be at level 60+, making your fights a breeze.
Now, if you have the patience, you can continue leveling up your characters to level 50 (such that your main 3 characters would probably level 70 by then) before playing chapter 4 of all characters. But as I got tried of grinding, I simply went ahead to tackle each story as it is. While it wasn’t a breeze to do so, it wasn’t that difficult either. But the thing is, your level 40 characters might die a number of times, so prepare yourself with Olive of Life. Since my Ophilia is the queen of healing, most of the time, I could just revive them with the small Olive of Life then heal them using Ophilia, but occasionally, Olive of Life (M) does come in handy.
Even though I previously swooned over Cyrus and talked about how much I liked having him on my team, I eventually realised how not very crucial his skills are. And so, in order to up the offense of my team, I decided on Olberic as the constant 4th member whenever I am playing the stories of my 3 main characters.
I’m done with 3 characters’ chapter 4 now and can’t wait to finish up the rest of them. But I have to say, the stories are all very well crafted. Well done, Square Enix.
