Whew Missidia Cave was a long one. The encounter rate is getting a little bit tiring and is apparently even worse on the famicom. Firion and Guy are both hitting pretty hard now with the upgrades this week but Mariaās spells still feel a little weak. Idk if AOE spells just kind of stink in this game or if I should be focusing more on one damaging spell vs leveling them all sort of equally. Holy feels kind of underwhelming at lvl 6 so far but the animation is pretty. Maybe Iām wasting my time on Holy and should just wait for Flare.
My memory is starting to blur a bit but Iām pretty sure this is the worst dungeon in the game as far as Iām concerned.
I also think my black mageās main job in the end game was casting haste and berserk on my fighters.
This has been my strategy for boss fights but isnt as fun as nuking 6 guys in a normal encounter (not like my AOE magic is doing that anyway lol)
All the Famicom FFs have issues with balancing casters and fighters IMO, usually to the castersā detriment. I think their niche is meant to be in AOEing large groups of weaker enemies and occasionally exploiting elemental weaknesses, but it leaves them with nothing to do in boss fights. In FF3 the casters start strong and end strong, but spend a huge chunk in the middle being uncompetitive with what melee fighters are able to do.
In FF2 I did the same thing as you and constantly tried to keep my various damaging spells at the same level, but TBH it was a lot of micromanagement for not much benefit. If I ever played FF2 again I would probably try to skate by with just one or two elements, but I will never play FF2 again. I taught the buff spells to my melee fighters so they were self-sufficient, and Maria would just pivot to being a healer in boss fights.
At least FF2 had a plethora of useful support spells (blink, shell and protect are nice too). So far itās the most buff-oriented FF, if you decide to lean into it.
Another FF2 quirk Iāve heard is that Mini and Toad are basically instakill spells. So thatās another direction you could take your mages. I never really explored all the options in the game because the prospect of leveling up a new spell was so daunting.
Oh yeah I read that too. I never liked relying on coin flip spells instead of reliable damage though. Plus Iām fairly sure it wouldnāt help against most bosses.
Might be a fun build for a replay though, but like you I donāt intend to repay FF2 any time soonā¦
Week 7
Another week of smooth sailing. I donāt know if itās my evasion or magic defense or just plain luck, but I seem to rarely be hit with ailments anymore. I had a slight scare when I got ambushed by 5 malboros and Guy and Leila got paralyzed but Firion and Maria just cast Basuna and we killed them. The second dungeon was long enough to stretch my MP resources but now that I have Aspir, I donāt think thatāll be a problem anymore. Plus Iāve been stacking ethers because I havenāt touched any of ones Iāve gotten from chests. The first time I played this game, I had to grind for hours to beat the final boss so I think I may have overcompensated a bit. I feel like Iāve basically āsolvedā the game at this point but weāll see how the finale goes.
Leilaās been with us so long at this point that Iām gonna be a little sad when she goes. She actually pulls her weight in battle now. All the flans pushed all my characters to work on magic so even Guy has decent INT now. It was amusing running into the Red Souls again and just cleaving through them like they were nothing after they gave us so much trouble in that early boss fight.
The dialogue has been getting noticeably easier for me. Iām looking things up a lot less often, though I did skip the library in Mysidia this week. I plan on going back to it during my lunch break today so weāll see if that changes my opinion at all.
Iām caught up with Week 7.
With the Pixel Remaster, being able to turn off encounters really removes that tedium when youāre just done having the same battle over and over. I havenāt figured out how to purposefully turn on automatic, yet. And apparently, I need to level up basuna and esuna, because at this point, theyāre totally useless.
Maria was full of white spells and now a lot of good new spells are coming, but I didnāt want to āforgetā the leveled-up standbys, so I started make Furry OāNeal a bit of a dark mage. I didnāt have a great plan or approach, but Guy is one heck of a ātankā.
I still havenāt been fortunate enough to get āHasteā, but I finally got āAspireā in the cave dungeon.
I actually hadnāt peeked at how to solve the cave entry puzzle, but the townspeople clearly told me what to do. Yay!
Week 7
I finished this weekās progress a few days ago and went over the spreadsheet to double check everything, but it was a pretty uneventful week. Picked up a lot of new spells, killed a lot of weak baddies, not much more to say.
The interesting line this week is obviously going to be this one:
Thanks to all the discussion here, I didnāt even have to dig into it! Great job with the detective work everyone! I had no idea what was going on when I ran into it in game.
Yep, that one was tough. But, it shows up again in FF4 or FF5, and I went back into the FF2 spreadsheet to reread my own research!
What do you mean by this? Are you talking about Auto Battle?
On PC, I have it as space bar, but regardless it is the same button as you use to bring up the map screen.
Ah! I figured it out on the Switch PR the other day when I played through the first week of FF3!
Itās the āY buttonā, and it replays my choices of the previous battle round.
I was occasionally accidentally getting into autobattle, and didnāt know what I had hit, or how it had selected what to do.
With the beginning of FF3 not having any spells, so everyone is doing physical attacks, itās the only choice ć 
I have on many occasions accidentally entered a battle with auto battle on because I wanted to consult the map but I pressed the button right when I triggered an encounter and completely messed up my first turn.
Yes! Itās the same as the āopen mapā button!