Trip report, Beginning of Chapter 3 Law:
Battles still tend to go pretty smoothly unless I'm trying use Recruit skills, in which case they become a clusterfuck real quick. In the final string of battles of Law 2, the first one has two Dragons and a Warlock/Witch combo that I wanted and I eventually had to just cut my losses and only walked away with the Warlock, who I probably won't ever use.
The duel at the end of Law 2 starts the boss with 4 Buff Cards, so, uh, hopefully the AI characters can distract him for a minute while you wait for more to spawn or are able to successfully knock him into a Null Card.
Healing magic still feels awfully weak, maybe it's because my Cleric refuses to proc Meditation as regularly as my Enchantress.
Torpor (inflicts Slow) seems to be the way to go with ailments. Poison is really powerful too, but Torpor gives you the benefit of keeping the enemies out of your hair.
Valkyries and Rune Fencers are top tier now since everything runs on MP and they can get Meditate. It's all Finishers All The Time.
(Because everything runs on MP, theoretically the MP Drain spell should be really good)
You can't buy MP Leaves anymore, which is lame, and every enemy caster seems to start battles munching on one or two so they've always got MP to spare, seems like.
Buff Cards put in Work. My Valkyrie picked up two Physical Cards early on and was knocking half the lifebar off of Knights. It's incredible.
I'm finding I'm paying a lot more attention to additional effects of gear than I did in the PSP version, because things like Counterattack and Parry are bolted onto weapons rather than being equipped Skills. Movement Up and Jump Up seem bolted onto all the Crafted Armwear and Legwear upgrades, so there's a strong incentive to stick with a lower tier +1 piece instead of what's just popped up in the shops.
They seem to have ditched most of the spells from the previous iterations of the game: So far the only elemental spells I've seen are the Missile Spells, the Indirect Spells, and the Instill Spells. Dark gets all the bad status effects, Light gets all the status heals + haste, and all of the Defense Up/Attack Up/whatever stuff is just items now?
Money stops being an issue as long as you can visit the Wildwood.
Because of the Level Cap + the fairly gentle difficulty curve + the lack of random encounters + the 2x speed battles, the game is really flying by, but like in a way that genuinely feels good? It's breezy in a way that this game needs on account of all the additional content.