Dragon Quest IX

[Yeargdribble]

Yeah, I was 37 around Gleeba. I've noticed since getting my full party together that XP is considerably slower.

What I'm finding slightly aggravating is that putting your characters on auto gives them a significant advantage over your personal control. If someone gets hit randomly but I've already instructed my Priest to do something other than heal, too bad until the full next turn.

However, if my Priest is set to auto (Focus on Healing) and it hasn't been her turn yet, she will heal someone even if they were full health until a single turn before her turn came around. Basically on auto it seems my characters can change strategy on the fly mid-turn and I cannot. So there's basically no advantage to manually controlling and a pretty stiff penalty for doing so.

[arus2001]

Playing on that, mob decisions seemingly aren't made at the start of the round, either. Lost track of people I've resurrected after an unlucky crit just for them to be killed again in the same round by a non-AoE.

[Charismatic]

God damn arus, I just finished replaying Tales of the Abyss and your sigatar makes me want to play it again

[Yuri-G]

cross-class buffs are important, but don't underestimate the benefit of leveling to 99. in the end you'll need four level 99 characters with all of the resilience and hp buffs, plus strength, agility, mp, and magical mending depending on the character. deftness is helpful but completely optional, and magical might is... eh. if it affects Magic Burst damage I could see it coming in handy for some very specific strategies, but mostly it's pointless.

also, keep in mind that one of the best strategies for high-level legacy bosses involves making sure your gladiators go last so their falcon slashes will combo. in that case, it's better to avoid giving them the agility buffs.

and yeah, both the enemy and ally AI can react on the fly in this game. also, ally AI automatically knows which fources to use, so that's handy.

[Yeargdribble]

I love that the ally AI is so efficient, but as a result it makes me never want to control them. Due to the turn-basedness, doing so would be a severe handicap in many situations.