Spells still useless?

[Nepnep]

Spell damage seems low and worthless compared to good ol fisticuffs

[Xenobia]

I find they're only good when used as assault actions.

But yeah, it's not a Star Ocean game unless the casters are gutted

[Inspector Gesicht]

It's easier just to let the CPU control any mages in combat.

[Grandy]

a lot of spells are multihits and hit insanely hard, they shine a lot in late game and especially after you get the break 9999 dmg limit , there are also some new weapons like that triggered shockwaves when casting spells for celine or one that keep increasing leon int as battle progress (from triggering battle skills), this make them insane

[Cyiel]

Spells are a lot more useful than they were in the OG.

[Scyris]

Rena's attack spells are ass till she gets gravity press, that thing is obscene. HUGE aoe, at lv 30 or so its hitting for 600 a hit on universe and hits about 6-8 times or more. Pretty much instakills anything she catches in it, so far anyway.

[Donttouchmyhohos]

Energy Arrow use to be one hit, now each arrow is a hit. They definitely made spells better, and the fact spells dont stop time is a massive plus that makes mages not annoying.

[AH-1 Cobra]

The problem with mages, is you don't get any weapons that adequately raise INT enough until they get their absolute BiS weapons which you cannot craft. You don't get Celine's weapon until you catch every fish in the game.

KM based characters become killing machines the moment you craft a good weapon for them, and toss on a berserk ring + ring of might. Mages don't ever really catch up to that, but they close the gap a bit with their best weapons.

If you want to see how garbage mages are, simply do the dual arena bout with them, and good luck unless you have their absolute BiS gear, it's gonna be a slough, meanwhile any KM based character just absolutely melts dual arena using gear you can craft. Also, I can win the 50 round survival arena with any KM based character once they hit about level 100 or so. Good luck winning that with a mage, you'd have to rely on using normal attacks to win.

Some of my characters can do 40k crits with multi-hit killer moves, and I have not optimized factors on their gear, and don't have BiS equipment. Even if mages could do 99999s with big AOE nukes, that's still less DPS than my KM based characters already do, so even if I could boost int stat to 4000 or 5000 on mages, they'd still be sidelined and put on assault boost.

I got all the mages in my first run, and they're all pretty well dumpster tier. Celine, Leon, Noah, Rena. Definitely recommend picking Rena over Claude, because Dias is a beast in this version of the game too. I'd rank Celine higher than Leon. Southern Cross is better than any of Leon's spells he learns through leveling, and Meteor Swarm is better than Extinction. Celine just has a superior spell arsenal pretty much the entire way leveling, and post game. Picking Rena also has the bonus of letting that annoying little punk drown.

[Oragepoilu]

The change doesn't seems to overall help. yes, some spell hit more and/or act as an aoe; however, the mage damage is still garbage. On top of this, they are also extremely bad when it come to survival, mobility, evasion, and they deal (low) damage only every now and then compared to any melee fighter. And they can be interrupt more often than a fighter.

I haven't tested leon though. But I don't see why it would change anything based on what I saw at the ruins.

Melee fighter also got some upgrades, too.

They can probably works on normal difficulty, but you are asking for trouble if you play on universe. early on celine was doing 130*5 damage or so per spell every ... 6-7s maybe ? While claude was doing 300*3 every 2s. And by the end of the game mage can barely deal what a fighter can do with one swing, not counting eventual stars/multihit, but spell are so slow at this point it's ridiculous.

Worse, caster like rena can do more damage in melee than with spells for most of the game. And I say most of the game only because later in the game melee is impossible since any hit would kill her.

[Cyiel]

Originally posted by Donttouchmyhohos:

Energy Arrow use to be one hit, now each arrow is a hit. They definitely made spells better, and the fact spells dont stop time is a massive plus that makes mages not annoying.

A few spells are still stopping time but only for a few seconds.

[Dogi ( ﾟ ヮﾟ)]

You gotta turn off the basic spells so that your casters only use useful attacks. Celine and Rena will happily cast press or firebolt instead of tractor beam and eruption.

[Yílõng Má]

Originally posted by Cyiel:

Spells are a lot more useful than they were in the OG.

More useful but still pale compared to physical DPS in this game.

[Star]

I've been controlling Celine ever since she joined and I've found her to be immensely more useful than she was in the original. It's great that spells no longer pause the battle, and she does great damage over a number of hits which also breaks enemies more easily as well as doing great damage in general.

Spell casting is far more useful than it ever was, but I can't say yet if it can keep up with my physical combatants yet. 😊

[Tensu]

I think the spells are great but as the game goes on they do far less damg simply cause there is a lot more items that effect attack damg and such and not much to add to spell damage aside from some weapons.

However I still found spamming spells to be useful due to the new break mechanic. Having rena spam gravity crush or celine spam multi hit spells would more or less keep bosses stun locked since the break mechanic as no cooldown.

I beat it on universe pretty much using claude, opera, rena, celine up till the very end where I swapped celine out for the reporter chick. I beat it just fine with the original party and only swapped out when going back to do the post game stuff not cause celine could not do it but just cause the damage boost once you get all the end game stuff was so much higher for melee