Part 5: Level 2 Magic
Level 2 Black MagicICE: Deals ice damage to all enemies.
AERO: Deals wind damage to one enemy.
BLND: Blinds enemies, reducing their accuracy.
POIS: Poisons enemies, damaging them over time.
Level 2 White Magic
HEAL: Restores HP to all characters.
PURG: Removes poison (entire party in battle, one character out of battle).
SHLD: Raises the party's defense.
SLOW: Slows enemies, reducing how many attacks they make.
Level 2 is where we start to see some truly good spells. Besides the standard damage spells in ICE and AERO, and the multitarget healing of HEAL, there are pretty interesting. BLND is probably the least useful offering here, since the loss of accuracy from blind, while noticeable, isn't usually enough to justify casting a level 2 spell. This goes double when you have POIS as an alternative. Poison deals 10% of a combatant's max HP in damage at the end of each round, so against opponents with lots of HP it's incredibly devastating. For white magic, PURG is an interesting case, as it makes you choose between using it on multiple characters in battle (at the cost of an action and at the risk of the targets getting poisoned again) or one character out of battle. SHLD is a generally useful spell against hard-hitting enemies and especially bosses, and will see use in most boss fights. SLOW is situationally useful, but when you're up against enemies that can make a lot of attacks, it can be exceptionally powerful.
On the whole, while BLND is lackluster, every level 2 spell is useful in its own right, especially POIS, which I'll get mileage out of for virtually the entire game.