Bravely Second: Hours 30-40

When starting this block of time, I decided to go back to the previous two side quest dungeons to mop up the treasure chests I missed.  This brought me back to the blue chests.  At first I thought the thief would be able to open them, but later realized that would be an unbalanced choice for the first side quest.  So, it must be sometime later in the story.

Then I finally got the long-awaited chef asterisk.  It's called patissier or something that you have to say nasally (I just call it chef because I don't care about it).  The fight to get it is interesting to say the least.  They introduce a new status ailment, ghost, where you can only cast magic.  While you also cannot be hurt or healed, a ghost counts as a dead party member for game over purposes.  I had to reset because I didn't know this crap and picked a character who was a fighter to be a ghost.  Oops.  The chef himself isn't too much of a threat (although he can charm, which is super annoying), but the people with him can be tough to deal with when he's feeding them.  Eliminating them made the fight much easier.  I still can't take pride in his defeat...I just beat up a pastry chef.

I finally got the boat too, so I could replace the canoe and actually travel around the world.  While Setzer's gambling ship and the whale ship were cool, the hot springs ship is...well, unique.  Silly, too.  Are they again trying to out-do the the previous game where your ship was a city?  Feels like it.  Maybe they wouldn't have to try and out-do the first game if they didn't recycle so much from it.

At this point I also had the game take all of my workers off their jobs at Fort Lune.  I have no idea why.  It did this at some point before, and it is annoying.  I may have only lost a few hours of work each time, but I'd rather know why it did this at all.  I don't remember this problem in the first game.

Two side quests fell during this time frame.  The first was the hardest choice I've had to make in this game.  It was either the monk or the valkyrie.  I've become fairly desensitized to the moral quandaries of each side quest, sine they don't really matter outside of which class you want.  However, I really like both of those classes (even though I constantly refer to the valkyrie class as dragoon).  I always like the monk class in just about every RPG, and the dragoon has jump (which is very useful and strong) and crescent (strong and super useful in the previous game).  I ended up going with the dragoon, simply because I didn't have many classes that use heavy armor, but I already had a good one that used light armor.  One problem down, one to go (although I am very much looking forward to getting the monk later!)

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the previous side quest we have the pirate job versus the performer.  Wow, what a choice.  I don't like nor use either of those classes, so it was a case of "which is less bad?" to figure out a...winner.  I decided to get the pirate job, so I sided with the ever annoying Praline.  At least I can punch her in the face later.

I managed to master (level 10) my first job class too-- the thief.  It's so useful in this game and I really like the changes they made to it!  Steal Life is wonderful.

What better way to close out this session than with the worst boss from the demo-- Geist!  As much as I hated him, fighting him in the demo did help prepare me for what it was like to actually fight him effectively.  He wasn't nearly as hard, so I have to assume they toned him down.  I saved my specials for when he summoned helpers, which would eliminate them.  Without backup, he has to either undo damage to himself or a heal that I did, neither of which will actually help him win.  I was very glad to finish him off!

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