Part 26: Class Changes: Part 2
Class Changes: Part 2The second round of class changes can take place starting at Level 38, but are dependent on having specific items that can only be acquired from growing ??? seeds dropped by enemies. This can result in having your choices restricted by what you have, but it's not that hard to get ??? seeds and the game seems to go out of its way to give you all the class change items if you have enough seeds. That said, I'm soliciting your input for which way to take the characters in their final class change. The breakdown of our options is below, along with some information on what we could have gotten by going down a different set of paths.
Lise
Vanadies (Light Light)
Our first option for Lise maintains a multi-target special, picks up the summon spell Freya, and… that's about it. Other than the summon she remains essentially the same as what we've got. I suppose you can say that this form has a slightly stronger physical attack, but that's really about all.
Max Stats:
Strength: 20
Agility: 19
Vitality: 20
Intelligence: 17
Spirit: 19
Luck: 16
Star Lancer (Light Dark)
A touch weaker than the Vanadies class, Star Lancer compensates by having a powerful summon (Marduck) that causes silence and the ability to multi-target all of Lise's stat boosting spells. Lise's ultimate attack in this form is single target, but this late in the game that isn't as much of a problem as you'd think.
Max Stats:
Strength: 19
Agility: 18
Vitality: 20
Intelligence: 18
Spirit: 18
Luck: 17
The Roads Not Taken
Dragon Master (Dark Light)
Essentially, this is the Vanadies option for the dark path. The Dragon Master gets a dragon summon added to its arsenal, some increases to stats, and is otherwise identical in every way to the the Rune Maiden. Lise's classes tend to be pretty hit or miss, and this one is definitely a miss.
Fenrir Knight (Dark Dark)
Similar to Star Lancer, the Fenrir Knight picks up a powerful summon and the ability to multi-target stat down effects on enemies. It's a good crowd control class, but other than that it doesn't have much to recommend it. Still, it's a valid option as later in the game groups of enemies can be as dangerous as boss fights.
Hawk
Ninja Master (Dark Light)
The Ninja Master is pretty much a built up version of the Ninja, with nothing new added to the table. His special tech remains single target, but all the jutsus become full screen hitting techniques. This has somewhat limited utility, although it does make him more useful against large crowds of dangerous enemies.
Max Stats:
Strength: 17
Agility: 22
Vitality: 19
Intelligence: 18
Spirit: 16
Luck: 21
Nightblade (Dark Dark)
Going full dark with Hawk gives him a multi-target special tech, some single target elemental and non-elemental attacks, the ability to lower enemy max HP (which may work on bosses…), and a dark attack on all enemies. Blow Needles, the non-elemental attack, may have some special effects.
Max Stats:
Strength: 18
Agility: 21
Vitality: 19
Intelligence: 17
Spirit: 17
Luck: 20
The Roads Not Taken
Wanderer (Light Light)
The Wanderer is a bit of a strange support class, with a wide range of abilities to boost characters, including short term invincibility, HP boosting, crit boosting, and the ability to half enemy HP, poison them, and lower their max HP. It's a situationally useful class, but somewhat tricky to use. Also, a lot of his powerful techniques require high spirit to unlock.
Rogue (Light Dark)
If we'd went with this option, Hawk would be picking up methods of doing ranged elemental attacks, some more dangerous trap skills, and some non-elemental attacks. These attacks are all agility based, which plays to Hawk's strengths, but in reality this route turns him into a poor man's mage… only less effective.
Carlie
Bishop (Light Light)
Bishop continues Carlie's trend toward support magic, but adds a few nasty abilities into the mix against some of the later bosses. Saint Saber puts holy element on weapons, Magic Shield protects from magical attacks, and Turn Undead is an insta-kill for most undead and does max damage to dark boss enemies. Also, she gets the ability to use Tinkle Rain on the entire party at once. This makes Carlie tremendously useful, since most of our fights from here on out are dark elemental.
Max Stats:
Strength: 16
Agility: 16
Vitality: 18
Intelligence: 18
Spirit: 22
Luck: 18
Sage (Light Dark)
The Sage goes for wide area spells rather than support, picking up the ability to multi-target all the elemental sabers, Holy Ball, and Tinkle Rain. She also picks up Saint Beam as an additional method of causing holy damage. This is a bit less of a supportive class and makes Carlie into a more direct attacker.
Max Stats:
Strength: 15
Agility: 17
Vitality: 18
Intelligence: 19
Spirit: 21
Luck: 19
The Roads Not Taken
Necromancer (Dark Light)
If we'd gone down the Dark Path with Carlie, at this point she would be picking up Dark Saber, an all-stat debuff on a single enemy, and the ability to summon ghouls and ghosts, and the ability to multi-target Tinkle Rain. The stat debuff would be nice, but at this point most of the enemies are dark element so Dark Saber would be an exercise in futility.
Evil Shaman (Dark Dark)
At this point Carlie would basically be one of the tomato plant men, with the ability to reset enemy attack gauges, summon gremlins and demons, and use dark magic to lower an enemy's magic stats. I think in some ways this is the weakest of the classes due to the way the game falls out.