FFR: Job Thoughts
Oct. 29th, 2023 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorThis is a list of each job class in Final Fantasy Renaissance, the Unity remake of FF1 that adds several new jobs to the game. Included are what each job can do, new sidequests attached to them, and my personal thoughts on each. I'm fairly experienced with FF1 and have done and read several challenges, so I have a unique perspective! Of course, personal thoughts are simply that: personal, so your mileage may vary on some of my takes. Note that these were made with a standard new game in mind that has the original's balancing with some touching on variant/challenge run play, and a bit of the new game+ feature that among other things boosts the stats of the enemies in the game.
It's much harder to give party advice on this game compared to vanilla. Compared to the 126 combinations of 4-person parties with just six jobs, there are 5985 possible parties in FFR as of 2.1! However, you can win with any of these. Some parties will be tougher than others, but there are no wrong choices. Choose whatever you like and sticks out to you! That said, I will give a bit of advice on potential things to pair with a certain class.
Naturally, I'll be going into full detail about things here. So if you wish to remain unspoiled on the new content FFR brings to the table, turn back.
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Warrior/Paladin
Pre-Class Change:
A Fighter by any other name is still a Fighter. They are no longer the be all/end all of party leaders, but they still get strong swords, more HP than anyone, and remain able to use shields where many others can't. Critical hit fixes make them not as dominant, but they're still great at slashing things down.
They have been given two new abilities. SHOUT is more silly than of any help: it plays a goofy "HUAH!" sound effect and makes the NPC directly in front of the Warrior move immediately as long as they're mobile to begin with. Considering these NPCs move when pushed against, this isn't too helpful. Much better is WARCRY. It triggers at the start of the round and lasts for it and the next, buffing all allies' physical attack by 50%. The Warrior itself only gets one turn of benefit, so you'll need at least one other physical attacker to make proper use of this. You just have to balance this against cost/opportunity. Will it make a difference, or will the enemies die faster if the Warrior attacks? It's a decision to make when using this command. It cannot be used when silenced, for all the times that ever comes up.
Post-Class Change:
While it gains a couple of new abilities, a new name and a glaring white paintjob, Paladin's true abilities remain in its equipment. They are one of two who can use Aegis and Opal equipment (and have way more HP than the other class), they can still use certain low level White spells from L1-L3, and still have the Xcalber waiting for them. They can still give up a Ribbon slot for Aegis/Dragon/ProRing, shielding them from 5/8 of the game's elements. FFR also adds the Earth Ring, which can give CRACK protection for CHAOS. There's unfortunately no way to stop time (only relevant on PHANTOM, rematch LICH, and the FENRIR Evoker boss) or status (paralyzing physicals from all but zombies) short of a WALL or ARUB, however.
One of their new abilities is COVER, which triggers at the start of a round and protects a chosen ally from physical hits for the next three rounds. It can be cast on more than one person if you really want. It's good if you really need a squishy/weakened character to do something and can spare missing the Paladin's damage for a turn. As of 2.1, they can take the Xcalber to the fountain in Lefein and exchange it for the Lunar Shield. This has 16 defense and grants resistance to any form of instant death. It also has a low chance to nullify enemy skills/spells and allows COVER to work on magic. This is not worth it except in weird challenges: you're giving up one of the best weapons in the game for something unreliable and gimmicky. COVER already is situational, and while the death resistance is absolute (not even SORCERERs can get through), it's just not enough compared to freaking Xcalber. You can trade it back at any time at least, preferably right after getting the achievement for obtaining the shield.
Their LIMIT, INVINCIBLE, protects them from physical damage for two rounds - just note that it will not protect the Paladin from status when hit! It also works with COVER as long as you use the command before the limit. This is very useful on fights like KRAKEN or the Spellblade's secret boss that heavily rely on physicals.
Overall thoughts:
The tried and true. While they don't get anything broken like some of the other returning classes, you really don't need any of that, at least in the normal mode. They remain very reliable tanks and damage dealers. You could never go wrong with a Fighter in FF1 short of very niche variant cases, and the same can be said about the Warrior in FFR. Who needs all the fancy extra stuff when a nice sword, heavy armor, and a bunch of HP can win fights? Keep in mind they are still the tankiest class in the game so far.
Personal thoughts:
In a way, I am glad there are extra options besides them. And since there's the party leader switching button, that you won't have to look at the overworld sprite in 90% of parties. It's also good to see that nothing really obsoletes them, either. You can never beat practicality.
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Thief/Ninja
Pre-Class Change:
Bugfixes have given the Thief some of its intended niche back. It will be the only class that can RUN at almost-guaranteed odds. It's still underpowered on its own, but there's a lot more going for it now.
Thief has two special abilities. MUG can be used in battle to steal gold from an enemy; this ranges from 50-100% of the amount they drop, capping at 100%, and does not detract from the spoils after battle. There is a special piece of equipment called the Thief Gauntlet found in the Titan's Tunnel using its overworld ability that allows this to steal the maximum amount each time. It is 20% weaker than a FIGHT and can't trigger critical hits, so it's unwise to spam it. I found it helped a lot in the early and middle game to ease some of the grind. It falls off by late game when you have all the money you want, unless you have expensive classes like mages (those who buy spells anyway) or dancers (who need 300000G for one song and 65000G Catclaws are one of their best weapons).
They have the passive ability to move and dash even faster while they are the displayed character. The primary overworld ability, SEARCH, is kind of obnoxious to use - you press the action button and it tells you if you're close to something. You have to play dowsing rod and face the right direction at the very end. It can get you a lot of neat goodies earlier or extra copies of them. It can also save money. Money in FF1 mostly goes towards spells and FFR is no exception. Of course, there are their scrolls post class change.
There are three big problems with this. One, this method of dowsing increases your random encounter count while blundering about for them - without a guide, anyway. There's a very useful one here by Shyao which I recommend for sanity purposes unless you want to go blind. They sparkle when you're very close to them, decreasing the amount of trial-and-error needed. Two, since they're everywhere - three to find in almost every room in the game - you pretty much always have to have the Thief active due to the requirement of having them as the lead. And lastly, your encounter rate will increase when going for many of these, especially if you're blundering around looking yourself. Classes that can benefit are Dancer, Bard, Dark Knight (unique weapons), Red Wizard (unique armor), and Geomancer (extra/earlier bells). You just need to find it all. There are also extra Power Staffs to find, which have a funny use.
Post-Class Change:
Thiefs becoming Ninjas was always the biggest change for any FF1 class. I was a little disappointed to find that FFR didn't add anything extra special for them equipment-wise. In addition to their usual perks, they also gain the THROW command, letting them use six different kinds of elemental scrolls. They each do moderate elemental damage to all enemies and add/enhance a weakness for two turns after. However, they're 5000G a shot and don't do a lot on their own: you need a party capable of taking advantage of them. And most of those are mage parties who need the cash for spells! Better keep on MUGging enemies if you do.
They also gain another overworld ability, SNEAK ATTACK. As long as they're the visible character, you will never be ambushed (except when it's a forced ambush) and have a higher chance of a chance to strike first. It's very nice to say the least given how badly an ambush can ruin a party's day.
Their LIMIT skill, SMOKE BOMB, is more funny than useful. It always goes first and gets you out of any encounter, also preventing random encounters for a certain number of steps after. Any encounters means any encounter, even unrunnables. Its best use is as a panic button, assuming the Ninja is even alive at the time you need to use it (and you can recover and get out from there). You can also use it on bosses, which is where much of the humor comes in: they trigger alternate - often annoyed or shocked - dialogue when you reinitiate the encounter. It can be used on spike tiles too, notably letting you skip a fiend rematch of your choosing in the ToFR.
Overall thoughts:
SEARCH gives the Thief an interesting niche in supporting the party with its finds, and being able to RUN consistently is nice. The hidden items range from a bunch of pointless consumables to gold like unique equipment, a second Zeus Gauntlet, and a fourth Ribbon. However in battle, it remains an underpowered physical class distinguished by the ability to equip the Fire/Ice shields/armors and cast FAST (but only four times per rest). Katana is nice at least and gives them another niche in criticals. In that sense, they're a utility class. Keep in mind that they will never be as good as a dedicated physical attacker; in fact, they'll usually end up on par or even below a Red or Blue Mage!
Personal thoughts:
The first time I used this class, it was a huge pain. Searching for items is high investment and draws out the playthrough, with the rewards being all over the place in quality. The unique items can be worth it, however. I also never really found a place to use THROW: most of the time, I felt it was better to buff and smash. Don't get me wrong, FFR did a good job of making the job more appealing to play, just not really in the most direct way. Then again, I suppose it feels like FF5 Thief, mostly there to help other classes.
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Monk/Master
Pre-Class Change:
The class that was unfairly derided by Final Fantasy Classic, brainwashing a generation of FF1 players with bad advice about this very hard-hitting class. Sullla has gone over some of the numbers on it. Just keep in mind that it doesn't factor in enemy absorb, which affects a Monk's damage a lot more at lower levels. Though with bugfixes, what are now called Monks are the most consistent at dealing critical hits and punching through any absorb an enemy might have. They always have critical hit rate of Level×2 (working out to just its level with the way it's calculated), which quickly outstrips most weapons and eventually overtakes dedicated high crit weapons.
One thing to note is that Ozmo has been pretty adamant on preventing them from gaining attack boosts. TMPR, EN-spells, Geomancer buffs, etc. will all fail on an unarmed character. Besides the obvious FAST, the few that work are Bard's VALOR MINUET and Warrior's WARCRY. Archer also gets a shot that can lower enemy absorb, but it's very inconvenient to make use of.
They gain a set of special commands based around chi. BOOST can be used to max out your points. One can be spent on COMBO, performing an attack with one extra hit while also allowing any excess hits to continue attacking additional targets, but disallowing critical hits. This does respect FAST and other hit% increases. Two can be spent on CHAKRA, a heal split across the party that cures all allies of poison and darkness. The exact formula is opaque, but seems to be based off the Monk's VIT and MaxHP. This is atrocious: both statuses are relatively inconsequential and the heal is only relevant at the very start of the game. And the problem with both of these is action economy: you need to CHARGE to gain points, a turn the Monk can better spend flattening an enemy outright. It's a different story when solo when they get all the healing from CHAKRA and the pseudo-AoE is more significant.
Aside, their magic defense growth has been "fixed" by just making it 4 on both Monk and Master. So that's a cool thing.
Post-Class Change:
Masters will now automatically start with 1 chi point per battle, effectively allowing them to use COMBO for free once per battle. They now have an upper limit of 3, and the new CHI BLAST is added. This uses all chi to to deal AoE damage based on VIT and chi expended. It is considered a magical attack, so you can increase its potency by using effects that boost that like MANA'S PAEON (but not GAIN). The damage from this can be unreliable or not worth it even with max chi. It's still useful if you have no other AoE option (which, due to the existence of Zeus Gauntlets, will only happen early on in NG+ or if you're doing a challenge that restricts their use).
They gain the COUNTER trait, which is really more like Hamedo from Final Fantasy Tactics in how they'll interrupt and cancel a physical with a (single hit) one of their own. Furthermore, they can initiate a sidequest in the first room of Castle Ordeals. This pits all the Masters in the party against a group of enemies (four if solo). Winning gives them the CHANNELING trait, allowing them to gain a chi point if they defeat an enemy with a FIGHT or a COUNTER attack (COMBO doesn't work, I think it did before). It's okay, but it's unlikely to have much presence aside from solos or at the very end of NG+.
Their LIMIT is FOCUS STRIKE. This is simple and straightforward: it executes a physical attack where all hits are critical. I'm not 100% sure, but it might be with lower attack compared to a FIGHT. Either way, at higher levels and with enough hits, this becomes a "you are already dead" that can one-shot almost anything in the game. Beware of breaking the game with this one. Fun fact! Before 0.8.4, this was a chi skill, and CHI BLAST was the LIMIT! Smart replacement there.
Overall thoughts:
The chi mechanic is mostly inconsequential. COMBO can be good, but they're still best at simply punching things really hard. They do suffer a little from FFR's restriction on needing weapons to use attack boosting skills/spells, but the math still worked without those in the original game. Besides, the critical mechanics now favor them, and there's still FAST. And that LIMIT is a disgusting instant win button in many cases later on. Don't underestimate these martial arts masters, they can easily keep up with any other physical class with enough training (levels). Just don't expect them to tank like Warriors can.
Personal thoughts:
People tend to sleep on the Black Belt in FF1. I'll admit, Sullla opened my eyes about them, and I hope that I can open at least a few more. There's something pleasant about just attacking something and watching it explode. They may not be the most exciting class to play, but they are fairly effective in what they do.
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Red Mage/Red Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
Red Mage is how you remember it from the original Final Fantasy: an all-purpose superclass who can do it all, even if it's not the best at it all. The class has been virtually untouched, up to and including not getting access to FFR's additional spells. The game around it has changed a little, but not counting the stat change chaos that is New Game+, the enemies and balancing are the same. Even with Intelligence fixed and in play, they still do enough damage to get the job done against the game's opponents. They always did before! Just remember that if you're doing a challenge that involves no class change, they only get up to L5 spells, and only CUR3/FIR3/SLO2 of those.
Their special ability is SABOTEUR, increasing the odds of status spells landing by adding +80 to their accuracy. It's a case of "we have Oracle/Mystic at home," and not something to focus on with the Red Mage. A HOLD might be able to lock down an enemy, but a slash might kill it outright and a FIR2 might do that and kill its friends too. That said, there are times when status can shine. So use it responsibly and selectively; most vanilla bosses can be hit by something. This is something that is more useful in NG+ than it is on the standard Renaissance mode where enemies have more HP, especially with BANE which works with it.
Post-Class Change:
Upon class change, Red Wizards can use CONVERT, allowing them to swap the available spell charges between any two levels of magic. It will ignore the cap on charges. This means you can turn your L1 or L2 spells into anything else. Want to spam more high level magic? Go ahead. Want more FASTs? You can get that too. Want to use magic before you even have the charges for them? You absolutely can do that too! All it takes is a single turn in battle. The sole restriction is that you can only CONVERT from and to levels that have a spell learned. Your spells will reset to normal after using an Inn or HOUSE, so don't forget to reuse the command if you need to!
Red Wizards are one of three jobs who can revive dead party members in the middle of a dungeon; White Mage, as well as Evokers over level 25 (which can be impractical to reach) are the only others. They can also get the utility spells EXIT and ARUB. They also gain two L8 spells exclusive to them alone. All of their options can make it difficult to decide on their spell slots. Despite SABOTEUR, you still you can't go wrong with the elemental attacks and these major support ones. Remember there's no deleting your spells in this version of the game, so choose wisely.
The LIMIT of the Red Wizard, REFRESH, allows them to recharge any other party member's LIMIT. The usefulness is dependent on whether or not you have someone else with a useful limit. Obviously no good for solos or single class challenges.
Overall thoughts:
In the original game, Red Mage was a strong class from beginning to end and that is no different in FFR. Sure, it can't do anything really new and fancy, but when the old stuff works and they can do the best of it more often with CONVERT, do you really need anything else? Some people argued in FF1 that they fall off by the end, which is only objectively true in vanilla and definitely not true in FFR. I did notice the lower INT insofar as they were doing less damage with spells and spellcasting items than my dedicated mage characters, but given that they were perfectly fine with it not functioning, it doesn't make too big a difference.
Personal thoughts:
I do wish it got some of the new spells to keep the idea that it's supposed to give you a taste of everything. I appreciate it not being nerfed at all except indirectly, however. CONVERT was a nice way to hit on the versatility angle of the class.
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White Mage/White Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
If you're looking for something new and exciting out of Renaissance, don't bother looking at White Mage. They are very similar to how they work in vanilla, still having a major focus on healing and buffing spells. They lean into the former more with the addition of their CLERIC trait - increasing the accuracy of healing spells and thus the chance they'll restore more HP. Furthermore, their floor is increased by 50%, increasing their reliability. For example, CUR3 heals 66-132 damage normally, but the range before INT will be 99-132 with a White Mage. This trait also works with the HEAL casting items later on, so they'll heal 18-24.
2.0 added the PRAY combat skill. This works interestingly: it heals 1-10% of maxHP. Each subsequent use will increase the max range by 5, so the second use will restore 1-15% HP. It caps at 30%. Nice on empty turns early game if also unreliable. Itemcasts will be more consistent mid game, but PRAY spamming has a chance to restore more on high HP characters in the late game, especially if you're higher level (NG+ especially tends toward this) or use it across multiple turns.
Post-Class Change:
White Wizards gain the RERAISE battle command upon promotion. This can be freely cast on any ally without any penalty. It will instantly revive them with 25% of their HP should they be reduced to zero in battle. It's a solid command if you have a good sense for when to use it. Note that SOFT and LIFE still don't work to revive in battle. That's a new class privileges thing...unless they go to the ruins of Melmond's clinic (the building on the east of town) and examine the center to earn the REVIVALIST trait, which permits the latter at least.
Fun trivia: in early demo versions, they had DIVINE SEAL, a counterpart to ELEMENTAL SEAL that boosted healing. It was replaced with the above for being bad.
Their LIMIT skill is BENEDICTION. It will fully heal all allies and remove 'common' status ailments in the process. It is subject to turn order, but it's a nice panic button. It just can't revive anything, so hope or make sure it triggers before anyone falls.
Overall thoughts:
White Mage does what it always has done, gives you large amounts of in-battle group healing and party revival (one of three classes who can revive). It may not be the most exciting class, especially compared to the new jobs or even the buffed versions of its fellow original jobs, but it's still the best at what it does. CLERIC makes it even better at doing this. Of course infinitely renewable HEAL potions and the Heal Staff still exist, but they're better at using the latter than anyone and can use their personal version of it from the start.
Personal thoughts:
Textbook boring but practical. A healer has always been optional in FF1 and the quality of life changes to buying and using items in Renaissance make it even simpler to go without one. They're still likely to end up in many challenge run parties and will never let you down if you choose to use them.
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Black Mage/Black Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
Like their counterpart monochrome mage, the base Black Mage plays very similar in practice. The new SORCERER trait will increase the accuracy of direct damage spells and thus the chance of them dealing double damage. Status spells are unaffected and it's unclear from the wording specifying elemental spells if the non-elemental NUKE works with it too. As of 2.0, they have a new battle command: BLUFF. It doubles all allies' INT for one turn. This is horrendously flawed. They need INT-using allies in the first place for this to be of any use and ideally high INT. You'll nearly always get more damage if the Black Mage attacks as well and since it only lasts one turn, they won't get to take advantage of it. The only use is conserving spell charges in magic heavy parties before getting spellcasting items, or if you set them off-limits.
That said, since INT now functions (it boosts spell damage by (INT÷2)% and adds (INT×2.5) to the status accuracy formula) and they gain a point of it every level, a Black Mage will deal somewhat more damage than they could in the vanilla game. I would also note of their high starting LUCK of 10, but the low rate of guaranteed increases can make them fall behind quickly. Since TMPR now works, they can use that to buff physical attackers along with FAST. They can even do it themselves later with SABR or the Power Gauntlets if you want to meme.
Post-Class Change:
Besides the usual expansion of their spell list, Black Wizards gain the ELEMENTAL SEAL command. This ability makes the next black spell cast ignore resistances and do maximum damage. It does take a turn to use it however, and most enemies have at least one element you can hit them in anyway. So it's simply okay with that...but it also works on status spells while increasing their hit rate. Things can really get ugly if you lean into abusing that fact. Unless the enemy has a trait specifically rendering them immune to a status, you can hit them with it.
They can visit Matoya after class change to learn the PRIMING trait. This boosts elemental spell base damage by 50% for each spell of the same element cast during the battle. A nice little bonus on certain enemies (if they survive the first cast) and bosses (which is just KRAKEN and certain Evoker-exclusive ones). Definitely better for NG+ overall though where they can start using it right after beating GARLAND.
They have a very interesting LIMIT called MANAFONT. This makes it so spell charges aren't expended for three rounds, and don't even have to be there in the first place. This one is questionable without the right setup and circumstances, and because of it will usually boil down to using NUKE without grinding to level 25. Like for bosses, FAST on physical attackers isn't necessarily the best anymore with the changes to critical hits, but it still gets the job done. Against randoms, this is mostly a waste.
Overall thoughts:
While spellcasting items exist and have unlimited charges, Black Mages are still great at making large groups of enemies fall down in a hurry. Don't sleep on their status or instant death stuff either; they have a lot more use in NG+ when "instantly dead" is more efficient than damage. There's many more spellcaster options now, but they'll hold their own thanks to their very high INT and their skills. And when all else fails? FAST still exists as long as you have physical attackers.
Personal thoughts:
Fun to actually use this and not have it be mostly obsoleted by Red. ELEMENTAL SEAL was what they needed to not get walled by enemies with resistances (without weird stuff like QAKE vs MudGOLs anyway). It's balanced nicely: it takes a turn but you get reliable damage to make up for it. MANAFONT is basically just "use NUKE early" however. I miss the hairy wizard design, too. At least the original sprite is maintained for classic mode.
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Blue Mage/Blue Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
The next six new jobs were in FFR from the start. Blue Mage is very comparable to Red Mage. Unlike the FF5 version which just presents like a part-time physical class, FFR's version does indeed have the STR to use weapons effectively. They also get the Chain at the start. In fact, their equipment draw is very similar to Reds, which means the Silver and Flame/Ice swords! Of course, while they can hold their own they're still inferior to pure fighters, so that's where their spells come in to distinguish them.
There are 26 enemy abilities in FF1 and Blue Mage is capable of learning 24 of them: they only miss out on INK and TORNADO. Everything else is spread across their eight levels of magic. There is nothing that isn't in vanilla FF1, so don't expect classics like White Wind and Mighty Guard to show up. Notably, they get plenty of fire-elemental AoE in the first few levels. Perfect for burning through the myriad of undead in the Marsh Cave and Earth Cave. For convenience and because many of these don't show up for some time (and in some cases, are only normally on CHAOS!), various NPCs scattered across the world (including some who only show with a Blue Mage) will offer you the chance to fight a monster who will immediately use a Blue spell in an ambush at the start of the fight. Most of the spells can be learned in this fashion, but not all of them, so you'll have to go hunting to fill out the spell list. You also don't have to learn them this way if you're doing a challenge run.
One annoying problem with Blue Magic is that they only have a chance to learn the spell, something that just isn't an issue in any official turn-based game in the series - except FFT, but even the Blue Mage style exclusive spells there (Ultima and Zodiac) are a guaranteed learn. The invisible odds increase with level. Pretty questionable design decision there - it apparently comes from FF11, a favorite of Ozmo's. I incurred several resets just because I lost the dice roll. One tool they have is SKILL LURE which will redirect single target monster skills to the Blue Mage for the duration of the turn. This can't be used for tanking directly; it only affects skills and not physicals or magic. Just to make this command more useless, only GAZE and DAZZLE are single target skills that can't be learned from a (friendly) NPC, and they still adhere to targeting rules. Just put the Blue Mage in the first slot. However, it has a secondary purpose: doubling the odds of an enemy using a skill. This has some big-brained use for manipulating what monsters do. Because of the NPCs, it's more limited otherwise.
Post-Class Change:
Unlike Reds, Blues don't get Defense Sword access post class-change. They'll need to use the later Sun Sword instead (or the new Beast Sword which is also in Mirage). They gain a new command skill, CONVERGENCE, allowing them to cast a multi-target spell on a single target to double its power, inflicting fatigued on the Blue Wizard after. Good on bosses, and can outdamage swording.
Their LIMIT gives them a 100% chance of learning a Blue skill and makes the next Blue skill cast with double accuracy. So here's the thing with this: by the time you get to class change, you'll already have learned most of the spells if you're diligent. In fact, there's a big lack of NPCs with them in the north; there is only the one in Lefein. It is good insurance when hunting their L8 spells, which are all stuck on rare monsters. I would also say it's good for low level, but they'll still need spell charges to use them after. That's still a design problem with FFR Blue Mages in general though, I feel that the diceroll aspect simply should not exist. The accuracy buff is the better component and goes well with their status skills. It can make their instant kills even more potent than they already are.
Note for completionists, the L8 spells can be hellish to get. One is on WarMECH, who at least isn't too difficult to manipulate (encounters 7, 20, and 24 after a hard reset). As for INFERNO, you can either pair the job with Evoker to have an easy source or search for a new monster on Sea Shrine B5 in the area between the big room and KRAKEN's room that sometimes can be harder to find than IronGOL: the slot 8 (rarest) encounter in the second-to-last room of the game. TOXIC is absolutely not a cool last minute thing like the Masmune, that's for sure.
Overall thoughts:
This class plays a lot like the Red Mage at the beginning. Strong equipment and capable of casting or slashing as the situation demands. Unlike Red, Blue gets no support spells like LIFE, instead learning more instant death spells (which can be effective, especially on NG+). They can hit hard with their spells with CONVERGENCE, and there's always spellcasting items to fall back on. The problem with not being guaranteed to learn the spells aside, you don't have to go looking too hard for most thanks to the NPCs with monsters who can teach them. It's up to you whether to go looking for the rest. I'd certainly get NUCLEAR at least.
Personal thoughts:
Blue Mage was the class I was most looking forward to using in FFR, and I hate to say that it was a little disappointing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed unleashing POISON on my enemies and throwing out the game's infamous instant death attacks; one-shotting WarMECH with GLARE was an utter delight. The selection just left a little to be desired. I suppose FF1's enemy skills are part of the problem; plus it'd be hard to implement something defensive the way they're set up. But I sure wouldn't have complained if STINGER or SCORCH or TOXIC got thrown out for something new to FFR to give them more flexibility. Might be fun in challenge runs. And again, that non-guarantee on learning Blue Magic has to go, seriously. MMOs have a different design philosophy that doesn't translate well to a traditional turn-based RPG, there is a very good reason why it's not a thing you have to contend with in them.
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Dancer/Rhythmist
Pre-Class Change:
Dancers are a lightly armored class with high AGI; it is guaranteed to increase on every level for them as of 2.1. They can equip scarves, which are mechanically shields with various bonuses. They can make a case as a memetic party leader as long as you don't mind their frailty - the LUCK and AGI of the first slot character determines ambushes, and they get a lot of both. But their real purpose is their pseudo spells, dances.
They can learn new dances by talking to NPC dancers, like a smaller scale version of what the Bard does. They will sometimes need to achieve objectives before they can learn some of them. Dances work on a system of bravery (or confidence as one of the NPCs puts it). The dancer starts with a certain amount every battle, increasing as their level does. This also increases by landing hits with FIGHT, allowing them to more reliably perform their dances which expend bravery. There's a chance of failure, wasting the dancer's turn (but not bravery) if it's below 100%. Success rates in excess of 100% will increase the potency of a dance while expending some but not all extra. One of their best in the early game is a strong HP and status heal, which is solid for the entire game. The first is a drain that is very effective on the SCUMs in the Marsh Cave. Another you can get in Crescent after beating the VAMPIRE is a full-party TMPR. Despite being classified as special magic, dances are unaffected by the silence status. They are affected by darkness however, reducing their base chance to work significantly!
The problem with Dancers is that they kind of suck on offense. This leans toward them supporting with their dances, but if they miss their attacks, they don't gain bravery. This makes them somewhat unreliable until they reach 2 hits. With physicals, they are like a worse Thief, having very similar strength and the same 5+2 per level hit%. Knives are their sole weapon type, including some new ones exclusive to them, the Bard, and Archer. None are really great in power; they'll just be doing chip damage before Melmond, and still trail behind every other physical attacker until after class change. Even the new Mage classes can hit harder with Iron Staff than a Dancer with Large Dagger! Their best weapon, the Assassn Dagger, is locked behind the Thief's SEARCH, and Thief itself might want to make use of it instead.
Post-Class Change:
As they continue to get more dances, including a full-party FAST, Rhythmists gain some tools to help them build bravery faster. One of these is the FLURRY command, executing a physical attack with heavily lowered damage but significantly raised hit%. Since BRAVERY BOOSTs are based on number of hits, this helps them gain it much faster than attacking normally. (Trivia: There was originally a command called FEVER that increased bravery boosts for two turns)
But if they do want to attack normally, they also become solid physical attackers in their own right thanks to the DUAL-WIELD trait. This allows them to equip two weapons at once; the second in menu order will add half of its damage and its full hit% to the Rhythmist's stats. This usually works out to putting them a touch behind the strongest physical forces. Besides Assassn, their best weapon is the Catclaw from Gaia's weapon shop: 22 power, 35% hit, and 65000G. Hope you don't have too many mages to spend money on. Especially since they'll also need to shell out 300000G for one of their dances. If money is tight, the Ancient Dagger in Sea Shrine B1 has equal power with only 5 less hit%, and using the Icepick as the second weapon will only lose 3 points of attack and 10 hit%. LAST WALTZ, their final dance, can also become a ridiculous nuke whose only problem is needing to learn all the others and beat a tough boss - which at least gives back half of the cost of the pricey dance.
They can also gain a hidden trait by speaking with Arylon after learning all eight dances. DETERMINATION gives a 25% boost to bravery should a dance fail. It mostly makes sure if you're trying to use a dance on turn 1, it will certainly go off on turn 2. Note that while you can learn all dances before promotion, you cannot get this trait until you do.
Their LIMIT, DUENDE, allows for any dance to be executed guaranteed and prevents bravery reduction for three rounds. Like most, this is something to throw out during boss fights. It can be very much abused with some of the stronger dances, particularly the last one which deals high damage.
Overall thoughts:
Dancers are a class that gets better as the game goes along. They work best in parties with multiple physical attackers, and can function as them in the mid to late game. Two of their best songs lean towards boosting FIGHT damage, and they can bring some single target healing. Furthermore, the 300000G song (why?) can get in the way of a magic budget for any class that has to buy them. You can at least comfortably spare one in same party; grinding, making sacrifices, or being on NG+ can also help. Another serious issue is that their dances aren't reliable on turn 1 until high levels (25+ for the first three). Other classes can use the abilities consistently on turn 1 as long as they beat turn order, but Dancers have to do that and may just end up falling flat on their face.
Personal thoughts:
I wasn't expecting to use a class that supports physical attackers in a party of three physical attackers, but in that sense, I got to see the class at its absolute best. When I used it in a more balanced party, I certainly noticed its flaws. The dances weren't quite as well-rounded as the Bard's songs: they were all over the place in effectiveness. Honestly? Not a big fan. It's interesting, and I don't think it's bad like Evoker or Dark Knight - that strong late game eventually comes. But being one of two classes in FFR that have explicit anti-synergy with other classes is a huge strike against it. Not to mention the frustration with dances failing.
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Geomancer/Elementalist
Pre-Class Change:
I get the feeling that Ozmo hated how these things functioned in FF5 (who wouldn't?) and wanted to live out a revenge fantasy, because this one is pretty absurdly good. It's a magic class statistically, which can use the Buckler shield just because. There are six different kinds of bells scattered throughout the game that boost their elemental abilities when equipped on their respective terrain; this only works on Geomancer spells and not itemcasts. By turning these in to a man in Pravoka, you can gain the Blessed Bell, which always boosts all elemental abilities and has a...very special secondary effect. You can only do this with one set, even if you have a Thief to get a second.
In vanilla FF1, mages were limited by their spell charges. Geomancer gets unlimited use of their spells from the get-go via their battle command, TERRAIN. This rolls a random spell from the current terrain, including some hidden ones that can only be used this way. Unlike FF5, TERRAIN spells are often useful. If you choose to roll the dice, the odds are good you're going to get something decent. If you don't want to roll the dice, you can always cast them directly with the MAGIC command. They all start with 1 spell charge, but gain an additional charge for the first on the list on every level ending in 5 and for the other three on every level ending in 0. This does mean they have very limited direct castings compared to other mages, but TERRAIN can sometimes restore used charges. Their spells also scale really nicely and can be boosted by a matching elemental bell. The healing ones are especially monstrous, able to act as a HEL3 or better in the later game. However, Sea Shrine, Floating Castle, and Temple of Fiends Return don't have such a spell inherent to them (at least on the basic list of on-demand casts). Also though this is only relevant on the overworld and Mirage Tower/Floating Castle: different TERRAINs don't share spell slots.
The class sags a little in the midgame. The Fire/Ice/Water dungeons all have a TERRAIN set matching their elements, which isn't very good on the enemies within. But two things keep them capable. The first is spellcasting items, still just as spammable as ever (unfortunately don't benefit from INT as of 2.1.1). The other is what they get after class change. If you're doing a no class change challenge, however, the class will noticeably start to falter offensively.
Their field ability is to prevent tile damage while they are the active character. Note that you still won't have random encounters while on these tiles, making it nothing but a benefit if an inconvenience if you have a lot of classes with field abilities you might want to use. Damaging tiles are only found in Gurgu Volcano and the Ice Cave, so it's of limited yet welcome scope when needed.
Post-class change:
Elementalists gain access to another field ability, SAMPLE. They can use this on a map to get a second set of spells from the terrain it's from and take them on the go. So you can bring water or ice into the Volcano to hit the enemies' weakness. You can bring extra healing where you need it. You can take some of the excellent support spells. And so on. There's a ton of versatility with at least thirteen different terrain sets. For no other reason than (rightful) balance, you can't use a SAMPLE in the terrain it's from.
The LIMIT is GEOSTORM, a nuke that hits all elements. It normally does fair damage. But with the Blessed Bell, this becomes a literal "I win" button on any non NG+ battle in the game, overkilling them for tens of thousands of damage. Use at your own risk!
Overall thoughts:
They're a solid class from beginning to end. They have a weak spot in the Ice Cave (and Gurgu if you go before class change), and their biggest flaw comes from limited spell charges, so try to only use MAGIC when you need to. I don't even think no class change hurts them that much because if the TERRAIN spells they're in don't measure up, they can just fall back on Zeus or whatever. I found myself comparing it to Red Mage in terms of versatility once they class changed. They can also support physical and magical attackers alike. Definitely a high point of the new classes.
Personal thoughts:
I had fun with this one. The nonsense that is Blessed Bell GEOSTORM aside, I don't really think this is that unbalanced. A mage with as many charges as they want is any mage with a spellcasting item. Geomancer can just do it sooner and in their own way. The spell charge issue is a thing and offensive spells have trouble sometimes in the elemental dungeons, so they have some shackles (granted one that's there's ways around as I mentioned). The healing scaling was a little ridiculous, but limited uses held them back in the early game and the late game dungeons don't have one innate. Hidden TERRAIN skills annoy me a bit, but that's just my OCD. They'd definitely be a good pick in a Living off the Land challenge, and pretty thematic to use the land to attack!
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Lancer/Dragoon
Pre-Class Change:
They wear heavy armor and use lances, a new weapon type. They have all the stats you would expect from a physically oriented class. In fact, their growths are a one-to-one copy of Warriors save for not having as many strong HP ups. But can't use shields, not even the ProCape!
Their JUMP command removes them from combat for one round and deals guaranteed critical hits upon landing. They then gain fatigued status for one turn, preventing them from using it consecutively. It has about 32 less hit% than a normal FIGHT and cannot benefit from FAST multipliers, but is also performed with higher attack. On average, one JUMP and one attack does a little more on average than three regular attacks. If those regular attacks don't kill anyway, of course. As always, the conundrum of Lancer/Dragoon is that it's a tanky class that doesn't do much tanking due to leaping up and leaving other party members to get hit. It's plenty good enough without JUMP should it come to that, but it can also be solved by party composition. It can supposedly fail due to the description of a lategame weapon found in the Floating Castle, but I've never seen this happen. Only guess is that it's referring to missing, which can happen early on but is very unlikely by the time you can get the weapon.
Post-Class Change:
Dragoons gain the SUPER JUMP command. This one will hit all enemies instead of just one but inflicts fatigued for two turns instead. By talking to the dragon in Onrac then killing 100 enemies with jumps, the Leaping Boots can obtained from it. These can be equipped to make JUMP and SUPER JUMP attacks activate and resolve at the start of each round. It makes them much more consistent and helps them beat back action economy. They must be equipped and are in their own special equipment category. That said they'll do fine even without it, and you only get one set of boots should you have multiple Dragoons.
They gain an additional trait as well, DRAGON KILLER. This simply causes all of their weapons to behave as if they're effective against dragons. It results in a modest 4-8 extra damage per hit on the relevant targets. Just a small extra thematic thing in the grand scheme of things.
Their LIMIT is SKY HIGH. This will execute a SUPER JUMP attack at the start of the round (regardless of boots), and prevent fatigued status on any jump attack for three rounds after. Turns still need to be spent in the air and they still count towards the limit, so this isn't as good as it seems.
Overall thoughts:
Lancer is the simplest new class in Renaissance. They're easy to understand, they work effectively, and there's nothing particularly complex or overly tedious about them. They sort of stand out in that regard against every other new class. This doesn't make them ineffective, not by any means. JUMP is fantastic at tearing through many of the game's high defense bosses; it and SUPER JUMP are one of the few commands that manages to defy the action economy problem some jobs have. Just don't treat them as a tank. They're closer to the Black Belt in the original: they're a damage dealer first and foremost, not a pure Fighter substitute. Even if they stay on the ground, the lack of shields and HP growths ensures they won't be as good at absorbing damage.
Personal thoughts:
After all the complex mechanics of other classes, it was nice to have something straightforward. It was funny that this ended up being among the last classes I ended up playing, which only made it stand out more. It was good. But I do wish they could use shields, they could in official Final Fantasy games.
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Trainer/Beastmaster
Pre-Class Change:
Without factoring in their commands, Trainers are solid and moderately bulky physical attackers. They have the AXE PROFICIENCY trait, which gives a flat +10 hit% rate to axes. This means they can get 2 hits with the Hand Axe at level 6, like many classes can with the Silver Sword but for a fraction of the price. Some new ones exist, like analogues to the Flame/Ice swords found in the midgame. They also have whips as a unique weapon type, generally decent power with high hit% and universally add 25% to the CONTROL chance, though they are otherwise weaker than axes. Their armor selection is solid: anything that can use Chain is, really. They can notably get a Bone Mail in Marsh Cave with a Thief, an Iron Armor analogue, but can otherwise wear the Silver Armor post-KEY and get a 32 absorb one in Gurgu. They even get the Dragon Mail after class change. They can't equip the Aegis Shield to go with it for as much protection as you can get without a Ribbon, though it still makes them a good candidate to go without one. Also note their high starting LUCK and consistent growths (4/5 levels have it), which makes them solid at RUNning.
As long as they're your visible character, their LURE ability will be active. This says it increases the chances of rare encounters appearing. What it does mechanically is give them a 50% chance of skipping over spots on the encounter table so they get through it to the rare slots faster (it won't skip over 7 or 8). It's mainly something to help a little with Blue Mage and the Bestiary. Or a super high IQ thing to game the encounter table.
Their command is CONTROL, which is one part what it says and one part instant death skill. The odds increase the higher the Trainer's level and the lower the enemy HP - from testing and talking, I speculate that enemy Morale might also play a role in the formula. Not all enemies can be affected by this - the game will let you know if an enemy can't be controlled, or if it failed due to the enemy having too high HP or just missing. A lot more than you think can be - basically everything not undead, mechanical, humanoid, or a boss. Notable targets are the WIZARDs, dragons, and elementals (EARTH, etc). Controlled monsters seem to be abnormally strong: I had a SORCERER hit another for over a hundred damage as an example. This only makes them better in most cases. An enemy under your control is considered defeated. Simply having controlled an enemy in a battle (whether it ends the battle enthralled, dies, or time expires) will also give you bonus experience equal to the amount of experience they give out, effectively doubling the payout - this can be earned with multiple enemies, but recontrolling an enemy won't give the bonus again. I found it to be fairly reliable, and the monster attacks are pretty ridiculously strong. Other monsters will sometimes attack the controlled one; this will not break the control but they can harm/kill it. Speaking of, you can't: attacks get redirected and AoE won't touch them. It wears off after two turns, but hopefully the battle is over by then. And if not, cast it again!
Post-Class Change:
Beastmasters are able to use the CATCH command to bring a monster into their stock - this works on the same mechanics as CONTROL. They can then CALL MONSTER in any battle as long as there's room for them on the battlefield. It will appear on the field and then acts like it's a controlled monster, including taking the Beastmaster's turn to issue orders. There's a sidequest to catch a T REX (a 1/64 monster in the north, soft reset a lot) that allows you to buy various consumables to buff caught monsters' stats for one battle. Thankfully unlike the Ninjas' scrolls, these are affordable. I found this to be cool but a flawed gimmick. It takes a turn to summon the monster, it takes the Beastmaster's action and they can actually hit pretty hard on their own. The issue of needing room can be a problem, but at least they fit in with bosses. I feel they're best suited for meat shields. Monsters do not recover HP except when caught, though there is one loophole: you can catch them again to refresh. Furthermore, they can potentially escape? Never seen it myself, apparently it happens if the Beastmaster dies, but glitchier instances have been reported.
Their LIMIT is FAMILIAR, guaranteeing the next CONTROL attempt will be successful if it can work at all. Considering CONTROL already has very good odds of working, you're usually better off just using it twice. It's not even decent in low level because the double experience goes against that.
Overall thoughts:
If you use CONTROL consistently, it adds up to a lot of extra experience over the course of the playthrough. If you can't (or won't), they are still a solid physically attacking class on par with the Red Wizard with some excellent equipment options. LURE works well with Blue Mage to help get to rare encounters faster, though it could be better than what it is. It's just a shame they don't get much of consequence post class change, but what they already had works.
Personal thoughts:
I enjoyed using this class. They were strong and solid throughout the whole game. The big problem with them in FF5 was that the monster cannon needed to be constantly reloaded. Making them focus on CONTROL and giving you a lot of incentive to use it helped (the hit rate is great!), and I like the idea of CATCH even if the execution could use polish. What I'd do to fix it is letting the monster act immediately and finding a way to resolve the space issue; allowing you to heal them somehow would be lesser priority but would still help.
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Evoker/Summoner
Pre-Class Change:
These are certainly in the same spot as other mages in the base game. Great when using their limited spell charges, dead weight otherwise, good candidate for spellcasting items when you get them. However, even when using their spell charges, they're of questionable use. Instead of buying spells, when the Evoker is the lead, you can find portals to the Astral Plane (Trivia: in early demo builds, this required "dust" items). Here, you can fight summons to gain them for use. But it's not all good news.
All of the damaging summon spells except GOBLIN take two turns to cast. These spells will lock down the Evoker for the duration and expend the spell charge when it triggers, so you don't have to worry about wasting charges if the enemies die first. Which has a good chance of happening. There's no turn order benefits, so your other characters might get to move twice before the summon goes off. It's really obnoxious. RAMUH for example is functionally two LIT2s cast for one spell charge, after the turn of waiting. But in midgame, I could instead use the Zeus Gauntlet to start dealing damage right away. And those two LIT2s (or even one of them) might be good enough anyway! Overkill damage gets you nothing in this game. This made them a bit awkward to use their spells; they were best against bosses or big chunky enemies because of it, where taking multiple turns didn't matter as much. Evokers shine better with their support summons. Two that stand out as distinct are UNICORN and PHOENIX. The first is L3 and besides acting like a HEAL spell, also dispels negative status including petrification. PHOENIX meanwhile has a charge turn (the only support summon that does) and is L8, but restores 50% of Max HP on all allies and can even revive them in battle. Just remember that these cannot be used outside of battle. 2.0 added perks during the charge turns for these spells; however, they're minor and unreliable. The EN-portions only add a little extra damage per physical hit, and while the A-portions are better, turn order makes them very unreliable in shielding your party.
Another issue with Evoker is the location of many of their summons being deep in certain dungeons, starting with TITAN in the Earth Cave. This necessitates planning and setting aside resources for two boss fights, if not being prepared to go through a dungeon twice. I don't really like this aspect about it. Worse, these fights are tough, especially for when you find them. As an example, IFRIT in Gurgu has 1200HP, which is more than anything in the base game except CHAOS himself. And though elemental, his special has as much power as NUKE! Other summon bosses hit just as hard. They're good to pair with a White or Green Mage for this reason for A-spells. At least, dying in the Astral Plane doesn't mean a game over. Others are weird gimmick fights.
Post-class change:
CALL, their battle command after class change, is a massive joke. It casts a random Summon spell the caster knows; they do not need to expend a spell charge (or even have charges for them in the first place). Anything can be called, including CARBUNCLE which "helpfully" gives your team Reflect, which is horrible news if you're casting anything at all on your party except other summon spells. Furthermore, not only do charging turns apply, but the Summoner ends up Fatigued after, a special status which prevents using battle commands and I hope that's it. I never used this unless I was bored and felt I could get away with it. If you try to game this, it can be useful. It's most feasible on NG+ where the command is available from the start and you can just run GOBLIN.
The only spell they can learn that the Evoker cannot is a big one. You can get BAHAMUT by going to the big dragon after beating all fiends and changing class. It has a charge turn like most do, but it deals a base 600 damage. That's three times as strong as a NUKE (though really only 1.5x as strong because it's used over two turns, before factoring in the below). I get the feeling this one was especially balanced for NG+...
Their LIMIT, ASTRAL FLOW, allows them to resummon the last monster summoned instantly at the start of the round with no charge time. This is best saved for big boss fights like most LIMIT skills. It also makes BAHAMUT even more disgusting.
Overall thoughts:
They're a gimmick class that has a lot of issues, and how the numbers work out almost certainly points to them being made with New Game+ in mind - and having played one there, they can indeed function better when all enemy HP is doubled. The damaging summons are questionable between charging and damage, but the utility ones are fantastic. BAHAMUT works well (almost too well) if you get high enough to use the L8 charges, but is obviously limited in what you can unleash it on between coming at the end and the issue of needing spell charges for L8 spells in the first place. Some see the extra bosses as more content for a playthrough, but it's still an extra hassle they have to go through. It could certainly use improvement, but it's not completely awful.
Personal thoughts:
This one wasn't very fun to play. The charge turns made this unappealing. I'd rather summons have charged instantly and do half damage. At the midgame I just started using Zeus Gauntlet as their offense. BAHAMUT by contrast is a ridiculous overpowered nuke. There's something funny yet wrong about being able to OHKO a WarMECH with sheer damage. The summon bosses were...okay? They added a decent amount of content as frustrating as some of them were. They have interesting use in a Living Off The Land type challenge as one of three caster classes with spell access. But those other two caster classes are so much better in that regard (not to mention able to get their spells easier) that it's kind of a sad joke. I do like the idea behind this class. It fits in nicely as a classic FF job and adds a bit to the game besides just itself. Even with the buffs to charging, I feel it's still a contender for the worst job in the game.
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Time Mage/Time Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
They made their debut in 1.2. These mages have a subset of Black Magic encompassing some vanilla time-related spells and several of their own. Accompanying this is the RESIST TIME trait, blocking the few spells and skills of the element along with Slow, Sleep, and Paralysis (!). Their battle command is EGRESS, which acts like Reset from FF5. It has some niche use if a battle goes awry and the Time Mage is still standing and can get it off. Another interesting utility function of this is that it rerolls whether or not the encounter is an ambush. I used it to good effect to prevent a bit of unwanted damage. Just hope you don't reroll into something worse!
They act much like a pseudo Black Mage in the early game. BURST and BURST2 are time-elemenal counterparts to the Black Mage's L1 and L3 offensive spells, although they cap out there (no third tier version). They have several status spells in the time-element including those, which aren't resisted by anything but two new Evoker-exclusive enemies, a Spellblade-exclusive enemy, and CHAOS. They also get WARP pre-class change, which can help skip around in the Ice Cave. DEMI and DEMI2 also stand out: 50% damage on randoms which can be useful sometimes, and only 25% on bosses which is still enough to chunk the bigger ones. It will need other attacks to help finish them but these make for excellent alpha strikes. As well as the absurd GAIN; this used to be a L1 spell and is now L4, and can boost spell damage by a lot. As you would expect, they get also FAST for physical attackers.
But one of their most noteworthy spells is FLOAT, which is L3. This allows the party to levitate for 36 steps. This does not just let them go over damage tiles. You can cross river tiles, Ice Cave holes, and even avoid encounters - including spike encounters (e.g. the EYE, the fiend rematches, etc)! You will instantly game over if FLOAT runs out over a river without the CANOE, but you get a warning a step before it expires and can recast it at that point. With 2 charges and at least 3 HOUSEs (one for the trip there and two to make it back, ideally one more to use it before the cave itself), it's possible to get into the Ice Cave before setting foot in the Marsh Cave. There is also softlock protection included by making any saves you make in a FLOAT-accessed area temporary. It's funny being able to sequence break, and if you can make it through the Ice Cave at a low level you honestly deserve the reward, but it's nothing too ridiculous by itself.
Post-Class Change:
...that is, until they get TELE, a L6 spell exclusive to after class change. On its own, this spell is inoffensive. A personal EXIT spell with a quirk that it can be used without spell charges (though they need L6 charges in the first place) and takes you to the ship, the airship, or the last used inn. But by using it in Castle Ordeals, SET TELEPOINT is unlocked. This allows the Time Wizard to put a warp anywhere and return back at will. Taken to the extreme, you can FLOAT until you're out of spell charges, set a telepoint, TELE back to get more, and repeat to go through dungeons with no encounters except bosses. Even without that abuse, you can effectively use this as a mid-dungeon save point that's better than the Green Wizard's. Just place it down, cast TELE to warp to an inn, sleep to recover spell charges, and recast TELE to jump right back in. Yeah, this is busted and can snap the game in half.
Even without those spells, Time Wizard gets the absurd DOUBLECAST. This is a battle command that can be used on any other caster in the party. It triggers instantly at the start of the current round and makes their spell (not itemcast) cast twice for a single spell charge. It inflicts fatigued status for a turn (it used to not do so), but it's still crazy. If you can still combine this with GAIN and other buffs, this can get ugly in a hurry. My L18 Black Wizard hit CHAOS for over 1850 damage with NUKE in a single round between these and its own buffs. They also have a treat for physical attackers, FAST2. This will triple the target ally's hit%.
So what if you restrain yourself from this broken nonsense? In that case, Time Wizard actually falters a little. Because the BURST spells cap at second-tier power, they don't have any big nukes they can toss out like any other offensive mage. Most of their mid-late game spells are weirdly gimmicky. Then again, spellcasting items exist, and anyone can ride those to success. Their own offense is otherwise mediocre. They get COMET at L7 (usable without class change) and METEOR at L8, but they're random damage and seem to be heavily affected by enemy magic defense which a lot of late game bosses have a lot of.
Their LIMIT is COMPRESS TIME. This gives them three turns to do whatever they want while no one else can move or do anything. You can set up, throw out damaging spells, or do whatever else you want while the enemies remain helpless. It's as strong or as weak as you want to make it.
Overall thoughts:
Time Mage is a great class, but maybe too good. At the very least, the time-elemental stuff can let you hit enemies like LICH with status where no other classes can which is a fun niche. At its most absurd, it plays by its own rules and doesn't care what Final Fantasy 1 thinks. It can do well in parties with physical classes just because of FAST spells, but GAIN and DOUBLECAST (if you dare use it) tends it towards supporting a mage. But if you're reining it in, this class is unfortunately nothing special.
Personal thoughts:
Completely stupid. It's either smashing the game to pieces or it's just there. There are a lot of things in FFR that can break the game balance, but Time Mage pushes it to ridiculous levels. Don't get me wrong. The early game was great with its particular brand of status abuse. And it was a thrill to lean into the heaviest abuse of this class, but that was nothing more than an ultimately unsatisfying novelty. I have very mixed feelings about this class. It's fun and strong, but it takes it way too far to where I felt dirty about using them at best and didn't feel like I was actually playing the game at worst. When I avoided those, what it was left with was either solid to not very good.
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Green Mage/Green Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
Also debuting in 1.2, Green Mage occupies an unusual spot in the game. It is a support class with a focus on buffs. However, as any White Mage can attest to, these are situational. You're not going to cast ALIT every battle (and indeed won't have the spell charges to), and a lot of it can be obsoleted by Ribbons. It's kind of the same thing that affects White Mages actually: they can't do much when not needed so they'll probably get reduced to using spellcasting items. It's also worth noting that HARDEN and BLINK can be done by Evoker on everyone, as can REGEN, but Green does get stronger versions of the latter.
They can weaponize some of these buffs, dispelling them with their EXUVIATION battle command in exchange for AoE non-elemental damage. Only anti-spells can be dispelled this way, including status ones like AMUT and their LIMIT. The problem is, this does chip damage at most early on, and later you can just use spellcasting items which will cleanly outdamage them. Even with more buffs dispelled at once it can end up doing piddly damage, not to mention it makes the action economy problem with this command even worse. Their other ability which was introduced in 2.0 is DRUIDIC BOUNDARY. It sort of exists. It has a 50-50 shot of healing an ally by 1-5% of their MaxHP when using an enhancing spell/ability. This is not a lot: 5% of 200 for example is 10. I barely noticed this one existed. Contrast with the REGEN line which can get pretty disgusting: they scale 10%/15%/20%/25% at each level which can restore a lot in drawn out battles.
So what else are they good at? Tanking, believe it or not. Green Mages get an obscene amount of HP for a magic class, and they have RUSE available. Their HP increases a bit more gradually compared to some of the more frontloaded classes, but by the endgame they're just below the healthiest melee classes. Factoring in NG+, they are one of five classes that can hit the 999 cap; they even exceed Lancer and Dark Knight in the 30s to ultimately end up with the third-highest HP on average. They have acceptable AGI and LUCK for a lead, too. Their unique poison (and later stone) resistances give some protection, and if they do go down? Oh well, you didn't lose a damage dealer. Just give them a spellcasting item and they're set.
That said, one cool thing is that they can cast WALL before class change. This obviously only comes into play during challenge runs that restrict class change. But it's there!
Post-Class Change:
RESIST STONE joins the list of Green Wizard's abilities. Alongside is the ACCRETION trait and BENEFACTION command, which (try to) lean into their tank potential. The former adds up damage taken to a certain unspecified limit. You can use the latter to pop a heal spread across all party members; for example, if 100 damage is taken, it will heal 25HP on everyone. Green Wizard has very high HP for a magic class, but this is still generally more effective as a small-scale panic button in a full party. In solos or with less party members alive? Probably much better. This used to be far worse; ACCRETION was a command instead so it only worked in a single battle. With the changes, you can at least save it for when you need it.
By visiting Sarda after getting the ROD, he teaches the WARDING CIRCLE world ability. This does a very busted thing: it allows you to set a save point once per dungeon floor. So you can save every time you go up or down stairs and reload if anything goes awry! Only one can exist in the world at a time; using it again removes the previous one. It might sound nuts, but it has at least one restriction: you can only use TENTs, not CABINs or HOUSEs. So no magic recharges for magic classes in the middle of the dungeon (with this spell, at least - SET TELEPOINT on Time Wizard is like this to an extreme), you still have to ration them out carefully. Still, it doesn't change how absurd this is, especially for variants. Instead of redoing a whole dungeon if something goes wrong, you can just go back to wherever you dropped the circle. You can ignore bad encounters and reload, get as many tries as you want at bosses, and so on.
It's otherwise very much a magical class. A high level Green Wizard has some interesting spells. The L7 spell ALERT stands out as one that prevents fatigue. Obviously only useful with a party member that has fatigue, but still. Their LIMIT is niche: BARRIER provides immunity to 'most' status ailments. Ribbons and WALL will usually do this on their own via elemental resistances, but there's an optional Spellblade fight that ignores these and not this.
Overall thoughts:
The utility of WARDING CIRCLE can turn the game upside down. Other than that, this class is defined by its buff spells, since its commands are questionable. They may not always get a chance to come into play given the nature of FF1, but they're there. They're more useful when you don't yet have Ribbons or aren't using them for whatever variant reason. Of course, White Mage can also get a fair amount of the buff spells too, and some of Green Mage's personal ones suffer from being niche or single target. REGEN alone more than makes up for it, just keep in mind that they cannot revive. They get better once you get spellcasting items.
Personal thoughts:
The changes in 2.0 did a lot for Green Mage. Even before that, WARDING CIRCLE alone made sure it wasn't the worst job in my eyes. Green Mage is great in just about any variant that lets you save or just in simple casuals. Otherwise or if self-imposing restrictions, I would yet again compare this job to White Mage. They don't use their spells in every battle either, and even though White Mages use their spells much more, put spellcasting items on them in the midgame and they'll both do just fine for themselves. It made for an effective tank in my four mages party thanks to RUSE and their high HP, and doing a solo proved that this wasn't just a gimmick: it has real merit.
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Bard/Troubadour
Pre-Class Change:
One of two classes added in 1.3, songs are the cornerstone of the Bard class, which they learn by talking to NPCs throughout the world to gain the inspiration to write them. While playing them, the Bard gives a boost of some sort to all other allies. They're small but effective buffs. Only four songs may be active at one time no matter how many Bards are in the party; subsequent ones will replace them starting with the oldest. Furthermore, each Bard can only play one instance of a song, although multiple can play the same song and stack the effects of it together. If they do anything but SUSTAIN or HIDE, the Bard will stop playing all the songs they are playing. This will also happen if the Bard is inflicted with paralysis, sleep, etc. The one exception is if they are forced to unhide when solo; in which case their song will be sustained. This was a bug kept in by design since it only helps solos. Their one spell charge refreshes outside of combat or if HIDE is used. Since a Bard can unhide and take another action in the same turn, there are few reasons not to consider using HIDE; like maybe wanting the Bard to be a valid target.
So they have special magic they can spam every single battle. They already make a strong case for themselves. They add onto it with a natural resistance to silence, for all the time it's useful. Bards are frail and can only equip light armor. They have a unique weapon type in harps, which never miss and hit all enemies. And as of 2.0, they also ignore defense. The Crystal Harp in the Ice Cave is notable for having a 50% crit chance. In earlier versions, I preferred using knives up through the midgame because the chip damage they added was more consistent; they get some good new ones. They can also use scarves. These are functionally shields with poor absorb, but sport other boosts like to hit% or crit%.
Post-Class Change:
Two special utility harps can be obtained post class-change for the Troubadour by talking to Sara and the Elf Prince. These respectively cast a random song the user knows and cast LULLABY (sleep attempt on all enemies) at the start of a battle/after an ambush turn. The latter is pretty crummy: enemies will likely wake up right away, and if they get hit awake? They'll attack that turn anyway! The former is unreliable, but you can at least manipulate it by holding off on some songs. Honorable mention goes to the Gilbart Harp, which can only be obtained by having a Thief and SEARCHing north while on the throne at Ordeals' entrance. It autocasts VICTORY MARCH, the L8 song that doubles EXP yield from a battle.
These new pieces of equipment aside, they now get two spell charges and can thus stack songs more effectively. They still can't stack the same song on their own. That is, without their LIMIT, VIRTUOSO. This lets them cast any song without using a spell charge and allows the same one to be cast multiple times for the rest of the battle, subject to the four at a time rule. There are certainly some worth using more than once, like the critical hit and magic boosting songs.
Overall thoughts:
A solid if not strong support class. The songs are all good, and you never have to worry about running out of spell charges with them. But the Bard can't do much on its own because its stats are pitiful. This means it's up to the rest of the party to kill the enemies. Is it worth spending a slot on a strict support character? Well, White Mage already existed in vanilla, which are also essentially strict support and can't do it every single battle. You could make a case for including them, and you can for Bards as well. They're at their best in parties that focus on pure physical or pure magic since you only need to cast one set of songs. The critical song in particular is very welcome with the critical hit bug being fixed.
Personal thoughts:
It was weird playing this class. It was like having a White Mage with a Black Mage's chip physical offense. But the songs held up enough that I didn't even want to use Zeus, etc. with it. That's a plus: anything that can break from FIGHT/ITEMS spam is good in my books. I especially appreciated that all eight songs were good: I found use for all of them throughout the game. None of them were too niche, too powerful, or ever stopped being relevant; it was only ANGELSONG (5% HP recovery after taking a turn) that took a while to be useful.
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Dark Knight/Deathknight
Pre-Class Change:
The other class new to 1.3. Dark Knight is an attempt at making a gimmick class partially marred by the design of FF1. They are physical attackers who only wield Greatswords. These weapons are 2-handed, so they can't use shields (not even the ProCape).
The problem with these weapons is that despite the class' 5 base hit% and gaining 3 per level, most impose a big hit% penalty in exchange for raw damage numbers. One big hit isn't really a thing that works in FF1: it's number of hits that gives you the big spikes in your damage output. They are absolutely going to miss a lot in the early game. Luckily, once you get to Melmond you can buy the Bastard Sword for 2500G: 25 power and +10% hit. Not much hit% compared to, say, the Ice Sword, but that's still very solid. Bastard is a weapon you can use until the very end of the game, and it's sometimes even worth using over the endgame ones because just it can beat them on hits; however, the others' power and critical chance will eventually overtake it anyway. The overall best might be the Cobalt bought in Crescent Lake: 47 power and only -10% hit. As a contrast, the 'strongest' Buster Sword has 60 power and -30% hit. If you want to spare the inventory space, you can keep weapons and swap them periodically to give the Dark Knight as much power and hits as possible. They may well be the best Masmune users just because its hit% is over 40 points higher than anything else the class can use. They especially appreciate being paired with anyone who can FAST them.
The class can use some Black Magic, a select two spells for each level with a focus on debuffs. Its exclusive spells are unimpressive for the most part, and the status-based vanilla ones it gets may not be too appealing depending on one's playstyle. It also has a command ability, BLOOD WEAPON. After using it, the next two attacks will heal the Dark Knight for half the damage they inflicted (or 100% with the Crimson Greatsword equipped). I feel it's generally not worth it: you're trading a turn of damage for just two of healing (which are subject to variance). However, if you're doing a solo challenge or possibly others, this is worth its weight in gold.
Dark Knight specializes in the darkness status. They have a natural resistance to it and if it's inflicted on an enemy, their SHADOWBIND makes their hit% will rise by at least 32% - good for one extra hit as long as their hit% is positive. They pair well with anyone who can inflict it en masse like Blue Mage or anyone who can cast DARK (including themselves) - though the action economy needs to line up for it to be worth it over just attacking from the drop.
One final note: their growths are horrendous. Seriously, look at them. Because of their low AGI and LUCK, you're likely to be ambushed a lot if you put this class in your first slot. They combo nicely with Ninjas for this reason, as they can prevent them while they're the displayed character (and can also retrieve a unique greatsword in the starting room of ToFR which can be used for a secret achievement).
Post-Class Change:
Deathknights gain access to the SOULEATER command in battle, hitting all non-undead enemies for damage proportional to the class's maxHP and with a high chance to inflict darkness, while damaging the Deathknight for 20% of their max HP. Undead get healed by it, but can still be hit by the status. I was reluctant to use this sometimes due to worries about running out of HEALs mid-dungeon, but it does hit hard and has synergy with not only SHADOWBIND and BLOOD WEAPON, but with their hidden skill. By completing a sidequest from a man in Onrac asking your Deathknight(s) to take 1000 damage in a single battle - SOULEATER recoil doesn't count - without dying (or at least one survivor among them), they can earn the MISERY trait. This increases their damage as their HP lowers. This is cool on paper and encourages a high-risk high-reward style not seen on anything in vanilla. But it's best with a White Mage, Red Mage, high-level Evoker, or even a Time Mage, so you can revive them when an accident inevitably happens.
Then there's CONSUME BAT. This world ability allows them to eat any bat NPC for stats. The bats on any particular map will all boost the same stats: for example the Northwest Castle's bats all boost LUCK, Earth Cave B3 and B5 all boost STR, and eating the Sky Warriors in the Temple of Fiends boosts HP. I thought this threw off the game balance, and it sort of does, not to mention the hassle of hunting them all down through encounter infested dungeons; FFR has a REPEL item to prevent these, but it's exclusive to NG+ (where you can just eat the bats as you see them). They will get +23 STR, +15 AGI, +14 INT, +23 VIT, +24 LUCK, and five strong HP growths (which will be equal to VIT÷4 plus 20-25) out of it. That's not too shabby. Yet this is in truth just a way to paper over their awful fixed stat growths. Worse, only the visible Deathknight will get the bonus: no sharing if you run multiple.
I never found a good place to use their LIMIT, DREADSPIKES. This drains HP from would-be physical attackers who target the Deathknight, wearing off once 50% of their max HP has been absorbed in this fashion. Like, maybe against KRAKEN? It has some use in solos where they're the only target, or if you use DECOY on them.
Overall thoughts:
By design or happenstance, Dark Knight is an investment class like the Black Belt. They'll sag behind all other physical attackers until you can reach Melmond, after which they start to take off. They make excellent tanks due to their solid HP and ability to wear heavy armor - just keep in mind their bad AGI/LUCK makes them poor leaders due to inviting ambushes. Haven't yet run a party condusive to abusing MISERY, but I'd be interested in seeing how they do when they safely can. The darkness hit boost gimmick is awkward, but at least it gets a reliable option of inflicting it after class change. Still, I feel that this is a contender for the worst job. Other physical attackers don't need as much babying to kill things.
Personal thoughts:
Despite this job being poor in terms of performance, it grew on me as the game went on. It's gimmicky, but it's interesting. Greatswords in particular are a cool concept, even if it takes forever for them to be worth it. It proved to be one of the more fun solo challenges I've done. I'm tempted to try a single class challenge (not solo) with them to really lean into the darkness abuse. It has anti-synergy with itself though, which is a shame.
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Spellblade/Rune Knight
Pre-Class Change:
Spellblade is one of the classes introduced in the 2.1 version update. It's a physically-oriented class that can use some heavier armor and even heavy shields! Can you believe they're the first FFR class that can use the latter? Note that their armor draw isn't as expansive before class change, and their low HP - they're comparable to Evoker - can make them a liability to put up front. Mercifully, they wield swords rather than the greatswords they use in FF11 (a favorite of Ozmo's).
They purchase their EN-spells from White Magic shops. These apply an element to an ally of your choice for the rest of the battle. It will stack with any other elements on the weapon. If it wasn't for changes to the formula in 2.1 (it was previously 4-8 extra damage before defense, now it's after) and their BLADECRAFT trait, this would be bad. The trait causes them to receive a +50% boost to base damage if their weapon is imbued with an element or a +100% boost if hitting a weakness (including racial). This makes it so they don't actually lose any damage when hitting a weakness, just turns. It even works passively with elemental swords! All this keeps them competitive with other heavy hitters. They can also use the IMPART combat ability to bestow this to all allies. This seems to behave abnormally as of now; for example, they can kill SCUMs in the Marsh Cave with an elemental weapon even if it's not hitting a weakness.
By taking a Spellblade along, you can meet a certain warrior wandering the land looking for a legendary sword. He'll be happy to pass off elemental swords he found to you or rant about others. Other classes can use these too, not just the Spellblade. This lets them take advantage of BLADECRAFT early on and provides a few extra free weapons.
Post-Class Change:
The Rune Knight gains access to the RUNIC command. This will allow them to absorb up to three white or black spells in one turn, whether an ally or an enemy cast it or what that enemy is. Want to deny CHAOS his CUR4? Yeah, it works just fine on that. It also affects player blue magic, but not enemy versions. Summons and geomancy also go through it. With one charge, they can use FIGHT+ to attack all enemies for +30% damage. Additional charges will add +30% more each. If they reach max of three charges, MAGIC+ can be used instead to apply their EN spells to all allies. It's neat, but requires a lot of setup turns that might be better spent attacking. Something important to note is that it will not stop spells when fully charged, so you'll have to release the energy from time to time.
Besides an updated equipment selection - which oddly excludes Defense Sword but does include all heavy armor (including Opal), Aegis Shield, and Xcalber! - they can learn tier 2 EN spells. However, this is done in a unique way. They have to kill a certain number of enemies with the matching EN spell to learn its upgraded version. These provide additional effects on top of the elemental infusion.
After obtaining Xcalber, you can fight the wandering swordsman on Coneria's bridge. This fight is bizarre and boils down to either surviving for several turns, beating him through his damage and status (Green Mage can help with both), or just DEMI and GEOSTORMing him into oblivion. This unlocks the BLITZ command, which triggers a FIGHT against a random enemy after using an EN spell, inflicting tiredness after. It fixes the action economy, but it also comes very late and after a very annoying fight. Note that you can still get this without promotion!
Their LIMIT is INFUSE, instantly adding three RUNIC charges right away. It's okay, especially if you don't have a party that can or are up against enemies who can't empower RUNIC.
Overall thoughts:
Spellblade was always going to be a hard sell in FFR. The design of the class is simply at odds with the design of FF1. BLITZ would have be a great way to fix this, but it comes very late. Thanks to BLADECRAFT though, they manage to be passable on offense anyway. The juxtaposition of high absorb with low HP is interesting. Practically though, since most of the big damaging threats are magical or hit so hard that armor barely matters, they can feel like glass cannons anyway. This doesn't make them bad though, just different.
Personal thoughts:
This one surprised me. I actually was expecting the worst with this class, but Ozmo worked hard to make it not completely terrible to play. Glad to see another knight armor wearer, they managed to keep up with Paladin's swording for the most part, and the support options were cool. It was all right to play and had a unique identity. Though that superboss fight was a frustrating exercise in luck even when aiming to outlast it.
Also trivia: they couldn't use the Masmune in 2.1 wtf that was just wrong. And a bug, thankfully.
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Archer/Ranger
Pre-Class Change:
The Archer class was introduced in 2.1. They come with the DETECT TRAPs trait, a cute little thing that highlights spiked tiles (fixed encounters). They are one of three classes that can use scarves, and can surprisingly wear the ProCape as well in contrast to other two-handed attackers. They have unusually high HP growth (gaining a strong boost roughly every other level) and the same hit% as Warrior/Lancer that is sadly mostly wasted on them.
As you might expect, bows were introduced as a new weapon type for them. These work weird: they generally have low damage, high critical hit rates, and can't do more than one hit without FAST no matter how much hit% they have. This uh, this is bad. In attempt to make up for this, they have their BOW PROFICIENCY trait. Preliminary testing seems to indicate that half their hit% gets added as flat damage - further halved if they are inflicted with SLOW. It's not really enough. For example, around the Marsh Cave, most other proper physical attackers can expect to do around 100 damage on a good 2-hits. Archer will still be doing like 30-40. Even when they get better bows, they'll still be a step behind most other classes. They generally have to rely on crits and hope they don't miss.
Archers can use knives instead, but the damage comes out to around the same, and the game pushes them towards bows anyway: they can't use most of their commands without them. AIM is one: it can be used to increase the power of the next FIGHT attack. It can be stacked up to three times, dealing 120% extra damage for each charge to a maximum of 360% (effectively 4.6× damage). Is it worth it? Well, it can be good for helping them secure kills in slower battles. And it technically deals more than two FIGHTs, but is still generally only worth it against bosses. And there's a better option.
When the Archer defeats an enemy with a melee attack, their HUNTER trait grants materials that vary by family. ARROWCRAFT lets them craft special arrows from the magic menu to use in battle. All of these have a flat chance to inflict a debuff, all are considered physical attacks despite being used from MAGIC (they can even crit!), and most deal double damage to specific families of enemies. Two of the right ones will outdamage AIM, and the status ailments can be crippling. You can hold up to 12 of each arrow at once; if you have multiple Archers, they have to share. While great, it should be noted that these are consumable. In other words, the Archer will have to be fed kills to gain materials to use this regularly. It's a hassle and a grind...
Post-Class Change:
...until promotion, when they the SCAVENGE world ability. They can use this at will to potentially find nothing, find a material from a monster in the area, or trigger an encounter. It helps immensely with finding the rarer materials like GEL. Still a grind, but less of one. If used after stepping on a spiked tile, they will have a 100% chance of getting something that the monsters give, though only the first time. This can be used on the peninsula near Gaia to find their ultimate weapon; the Yoichi Bow. It has a 50% crit rate, which helps them a lot.
Then there's the HUNTER'S MARK command. This is absolutely disgusting. It triggers at the start of a round, and the next time the targeted monster is physically attacked? It forces all hits to be critical! This is like having the Master's LIMIT available on-demand, and is fantastic as long as you have at least one other physical attacker. Kind of sucks otherwise; the Ranger can take advantage, but the action economy sucks in that case. At least you don't need a bow for this one. It does not inflict tiredness either, so this is highly spammable.
Their LIMIT is RAPID-FIRE. Requiring a bow to use, it deals 4 physical hits at full power with max damage variance to random targets, ignoring defense and evasion. It is still subject to missing. It's also unaffected by Slow. It's okay.
Overall thoughts:
The gimmick of attacking only once doesn't really work in FF1. It's sort of like a worse version of what the Dark Knight suffers from, because at least they can eventually get multiple hits and hit way harder. Archers are limited to that through FAST, which is thankfully by design. Their low damage output makes it that much harder to create their magic arrows, the true strength of their class. It's sluggish at best and endangers your squishier party members at worst, the other example of an FFR class that has anti-synergy with others. Even after promotion and gaining the Yoichi Bow, HUNTER'S MARK was so ridiculous that I simply had them spamming that in boss fights rather than futzing around with their own unreliable damage. It saves them from being at the bottom of the barrel.
Personal thoughts:
All that hassle made it so that I didn't really end up using magic arrows a lot. Even when I used them, it was for the status; the damage was underwhelming. At least I got a steady stream of them from having a mostly physical party, it'd have been way worse with more AoE. I can see this gimmick being fun in a solo or single class challenge. HUNTER'S MARK also really needs tiredness, it's just too overpowered. I'm really not sure how to feel about this one overall. They just sucked on offense, the arrow support was fine if derivative, and murder enabling was too good to where the job didn't get a chance to shine on its own merits. I'm leaning towards apathy here, if not, weakly disliking it.
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Index
It's much harder to give party advice on this game compared to vanilla. Compared to the 126 combinations of 4-person parties with just six jobs, there are 5985 possible parties in FFR as of 2.1! However, you can win with any of these. Some parties will be tougher than others, but there are no wrong choices. Choose whatever you like and sticks out to you! That said, I will give a bit of advice on potential things to pair with a certain class.
Naturally, I'll be going into full detail about things here. So if you wish to remain unspoiled on the new content FFR brings to the table, turn back.
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Warrior/Paladin
Pre-Class Change:
A Fighter by any other name is still a Fighter. They are no longer the be all/end all of party leaders, but they still get strong swords, more HP than anyone, and remain able to use shields where many others can't. Critical hit fixes make them not as dominant, but they're still great at slashing things down.
They have been given two new abilities. SHOUT is more silly than of any help: it plays a goofy "HUAH!" sound effect and makes the NPC directly in front of the Warrior move immediately as long as they're mobile to begin with. Considering these NPCs move when pushed against, this isn't too helpful. Much better is WARCRY. It triggers at the start of the round and lasts for it and the next, buffing all allies' physical attack by 50%. The Warrior itself only gets one turn of benefit, so you'll need at least one other physical attacker to make proper use of this. You just have to balance this against cost/opportunity. Will it make a difference, or will the enemies die faster if the Warrior attacks? It's a decision to make when using this command. It cannot be used when silenced, for all the times that ever comes up.
Post-Class Change:
While it gains a couple of new abilities, a new name and a glaring white paintjob, Paladin's true abilities remain in its equipment. They are one of two who can use Aegis and Opal equipment (and have way more HP than the other class), they can still use certain low level White spells from L1-L3, and still have the Xcalber waiting for them. They can still give up a Ribbon slot for Aegis/Dragon/ProRing, shielding them from 5/8 of the game's elements. FFR also adds the Earth Ring, which can give CRACK protection for CHAOS. There's unfortunately no way to stop time (only relevant on PHANTOM, rematch LICH, and the FENRIR Evoker boss) or status (paralyzing physicals from all but zombies) short of a WALL or ARUB, however.
One of their new abilities is COVER, which triggers at the start of a round and protects a chosen ally from physical hits for the next three rounds. It can be cast on more than one person if you really want. It's good if you really need a squishy/weakened character to do something and can spare missing the Paladin's damage for a turn. As of 2.1, they can take the Xcalber to the fountain in Lefein and exchange it for the Lunar Shield. This has 16 defense and grants resistance to any form of instant death. It also has a low chance to nullify enemy skills/spells and allows COVER to work on magic. This is not worth it except in weird challenges: you're giving up one of the best weapons in the game for something unreliable and gimmicky. COVER already is situational, and while the death resistance is absolute (not even SORCERERs can get through), it's just not enough compared to freaking Xcalber. You can trade it back at any time at least, preferably right after getting the achievement for obtaining the shield.
Their LIMIT, INVINCIBLE, protects them from physical damage for two rounds - just note that it will not protect the Paladin from status when hit! It also works with COVER as long as you use the command before the limit. This is very useful on fights like KRAKEN or the Spellblade's secret boss that heavily rely on physicals.
Overall thoughts:
The tried and true. While they don't get anything broken like some of the other returning classes, you really don't need any of that, at least in the normal mode. They remain very reliable tanks and damage dealers. You could never go wrong with a Fighter in FF1 short of very niche variant cases, and the same can be said about the Warrior in FFR. Who needs all the fancy extra stuff when a nice sword, heavy armor, and a bunch of HP can win fights? Keep in mind they are still the tankiest class in the game so far.
Personal thoughts:
In a way, I am glad there are extra options besides them. And since there's the party leader switching button, that you won't have to look at the overworld sprite in 90% of parties. It's also good to see that nothing really obsoletes them, either. You can never beat practicality.
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Thief/Ninja
Pre-Class Change:
Bugfixes have given the Thief some of its intended niche back. It will be the only class that can RUN at almost-guaranteed odds. It's still underpowered on its own, but there's a lot more going for it now.
Thief has two special abilities. MUG can be used in battle to steal gold from an enemy; this ranges from 50-100% of the amount they drop, capping at 100%, and does not detract from the spoils after battle. There is a special piece of equipment called the Thief Gauntlet found in the Titan's Tunnel using its overworld ability that allows this to steal the maximum amount each time. It is 20% weaker than a FIGHT and can't trigger critical hits, so it's unwise to spam it. I found it helped a lot in the early and middle game to ease some of the grind. It falls off by late game when you have all the money you want, unless you have expensive classes like mages (those who buy spells anyway) or dancers (who need 300000G for one song and 65000G Catclaws are one of their best weapons).
They have the passive ability to move and dash even faster while they are the displayed character. The primary overworld ability, SEARCH, is kind of obnoxious to use - you press the action button and it tells you if you're close to something. You have to play dowsing rod and face the right direction at the very end. It can get you a lot of neat goodies earlier or extra copies of them. It can also save money. Money in FF1 mostly goes towards spells and FFR is no exception. Of course, there are their scrolls post class change.
There are three big problems with this. One, this method of dowsing increases your random encounter count while blundering about for them - without a guide, anyway. There's a very useful one here by Shyao which I recommend for sanity purposes unless you want to go blind. They sparkle when you're very close to them, decreasing the amount of trial-and-error needed. Two, since they're everywhere - three to find in almost every room in the game - you pretty much always have to have the Thief active due to the requirement of having them as the lead. And lastly, your encounter rate will increase when going for many of these, especially if you're blundering around looking yourself. Classes that can benefit are Dancer, Bard, Dark Knight (unique weapons), Red Wizard (unique armor), and Geomancer (extra/earlier bells). You just need to find it all. There are also extra Power Staffs to find, which have a funny use.
Post-Class Change:
Thiefs becoming Ninjas was always the biggest change for any FF1 class. I was a little disappointed to find that FFR didn't add anything extra special for them equipment-wise. In addition to their usual perks, they also gain the THROW command, letting them use six different kinds of elemental scrolls. They each do moderate elemental damage to all enemies and add/enhance a weakness for two turns after. However, they're 5000G a shot and don't do a lot on their own: you need a party capable of taking advantage of them. And most of those are mage parties who need the cash for spells! Better keep on MUGging enemies if you do.
They also gain another overworld ability, SNEAK ATTACK. As long as they're the visible character, you will never be ambushed (except when it's a forced ambush) and have a higher chance of a chance to strike first. It's very nice to say the least given how badly an ambush can ruin a party's day.
Their LIMIT skill, SMOKE BOMB, is more funny than useful. It always goes first and gets you out of any encounter, also preventing random encounters for a certain number of steps after. Any encounters means any encounter, even unrunnables. Its best use is as a panic button, assuming the Ninja is even alive at the time you need to use it (and you can recover and get out from there). You can also use it on bosses, which is where much of the humor comes in: they trigger alternate - often annoyed or shocked - dialogue when you reinitiate the encounter. It can be used on spike tiles too, notably letting you skip a fiend rematch of your choosing in the ToFR.
Overall thoughts:
SEARCH gives the Thief an interesting niche in supporting the party with its finds, and being able to RUN consistently is nice. The hidden items range from a bunch of pointless consumables to gold like unique equipment, a second Zeus Gauntlet, and a fourth Ribbon. However in battle, it remains an underpowered physical class distinguished by the ability to equip the Fire/Ice shields/armors and cast FAST (but only four times per rest). Katana is nice at least and gives them another niche in criticals. In that sense, they're a utility class. Keep in mind that they will never be as good as a dedicated physical attacker; in fact, they'll usually end up on par or even below a Red or Blue Mage!
Personal thoughts:
The first time I used this class, it was a huge pain. Searching for items is high investment and draws out the playthrough, with the rewards being all over the place in quality. The unique items can be worth it, however. I also never really found a place to use THROW: most of the time, I felt it was better to buff and smash. Don't get me wrong, FFR did a good job of making the job more appealing to play, just not really in the most direct way. Then again, I suppose it feels like FF5 Thief, mostly there to help other classes.
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Monk/Master
Pre-Class Change:
The class that was unfairly derided by Final Fantasy Classic, brainwashing a generation of FF1 players with bad advice about this very hard-hitting class. Sullla has gone over some of the numbers on it. Just keep in mind that it doesn't factor in enemy absorb, which affects a Monk's damage a lot more at lower levels. Though with bugfixes, what are now called Monks are the most consistent at dealing critical hits and punching through any absorb an enemy might have. They always have critical hit rate of Level×2 (working out to just its level with the way it's calculated), which quickly outstrips most weapons and eventually overtakes dedicated high crit weapons.
One thing to note is that Ozmo has been pretty adamant on preventing them from gaining attack boosts. TMPR, EN-spells, Geomancer buffs, etc. will all fail on an unarmed character. Besides the obvious FAST, the few that work are Bard's VALOR MINUET and Warrior's WARCRY. Archer also gets a shot that can lower enemy absorb, but it's very inconvenient to make use of.
They gain a set of special commands based around chi. BOOST can be used to max out your points. One can be spent on COMBO, performing an attack with one extra hit while also allowing any excess hits to continue attacking additional targets, but disallowing critical hits. This does respect FAST and other hit% increases. Two can be spent on CHAKRA, a heal split across the party that cures all allies of poison and darkness. The exact formula is opaque, but seems to be based off the Monk's VIT and MaxHP. This is atrocious: both statuses are relatively inconsequential and the heal is only relevant at the very start of the game. And the problem with both of these is action economy: you need to CHARGE to gain points, a turn the Monk can better spend flattening an enemy outright. It's a different story when solo when they get all the healing from CHAKRA and the pseudo-AoE is more significant.
Aside, their magic defense growth has been "fixed" by just making it 4 on both Monk and Master. So that's a cool thing.
Post-Class Change:
Masters will now automatically start with 1 chi point per battle, effectively allowing them to use COMBO for free once per battle. They now have an upper limit of 3, and the new CHI BLAST is added. This uses all chi to to deal AoE damage based on VIT and chi expended. It is considered a magical attack, so you can increase its potency by using effects that boost that like MANA'S PAEON (but not GAIN). The damage from this can be unreliable or not worth it even with max chi. It's still useful if you have no other AoE option (which, due to the existence of Zeus Gauntlets, will only happen early on in NG+ or if you're doing a challenge that restricts their use).
They gain the COUNTER trait, which is really more like Hamedo from Final Fantasy Tactics in how they'll interrupt and cancel a physical with a (single hit) one of their own. Furthermore, they can initiate a sidequest in the first room of Castle Ordeals. This pits all the Masters in the party against a group of enemies (four if solo). Winning gives them the CHANNELING trait, allowing them to gain a chi point if they defeat an enemy with a FIGHT or a COUNTER attack (COMBO doesn't work, I think it did before). It's okay, but it's unlikely to have much presence aside from solos or at the very end of NG+.
Their LIMIT is FOCUS STRIKE. This is simple and straightforward: it executes a physical attack where all hits are critical. I'm not 100% sure, but it might be with lower attack compared to a FIGHT. Either way, at higher levels and with enough hits, this becomes a "you are already dead" that can one-shot almost anything in the game. Beware of breaking the game with this one. Fun fact! Before 0.8.4, this was a chi skill, and CHI BLAST was the LIMIT! Smart replacement there.
Overall thoughts:
The chi mechanic is mostly inconsequential. COMBO can be good, but they're still best at simply punching things really hard. They do suffer a little from FFR's restriction on needing weapons to use attack boosting skills/spells, but the math still worked without those in the original game. Besides, the critical mechanics now favor them, and there's still FAST. And that LIMIT is a disgusting instant win button in many cases later on. Don't underestimate these martial arts masters, they can easily keep up with any other physical class with enough training (levels). Just don't expect them to tank like Warriors can.
Personal thoughts:
People tend to sleep on the Black Belt in FF1. I'll admit, Sullla opened my eyes about them, and I hope that I can open at least a few more. There's something pleasant about just attacking something and watching it explode. They may not be the most exciting class to play, but they are fairly effective in what they do.
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Red Mage/Red Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
Red Mage is how you remember it from the original Final Fantasy: an all-purpose superclass who can do it all, even if it's not the best at it all. The class has been virtually untouched, up to and including not getting access to FFR's additional spells. The game around it has changed a little, but not counting the stat change chaos that is New Game+, the enemies and balancing are the same. Even with Intelligence fixed and in play, they still do enough damage to get the job done against the game's opponents. They always did before! Just remember that if you're doing a challenge that involves no class change, they only get up to L5 spells, and only CUR3/FIR3/SLO2 of those.
Their special ability is SABOTEUR, increasing the odds of status spells landing by adding +80 to their accuracy. It's a case of "we have Oracle/Mystic at home," and not something to focus on with the Red Mage. A HOLD might be able to lock down an enemy, but a slash might kill it outright and a FIR2 might do that and kill its friends too. That said, there are times when status can shine. So use it responsibly and selectively; most vanilla bosses can be hit by something. This is something that is more useful in NG+ than it is on the standard Renaissance mode where enemies have more HP, especially with BANE which works with it.
Post-Class Change:
Upon class change, Red Wizards can use CONVERT, allowing them to swap the available spell charges between any two levels of magic. It will ignore the cap on charges. This means you can turn your L1 or L2 spells into anything else. Want to spam more high level magic? Go ahead. Want more FASTs? You can get that too. Want to use magic before you even have the charges for them? You absolutely can do that too! All it takes is a single turn in battle. The sole restriction is that you can only CONVERT from and to levels that have a spell learned. Your spells will reset to normal after using an Inn or HOUSE, so don't forget to reuse the command if you need to!
Red Wizards are one of three jobs who can revive dead party members in the middle of a dungeon; White Mage, as well as Evokers over level 25 (which can be impractical to reach) are the only others. They can also get the utility spells EXIT and ARUB. They also gain two L8 spells exclusive to them alone. All of their options can make it difficult to decide on their spell slots. Despite SABOTEUR, you still you can't go wrong with the elemental attacks and these major support ones. Remember there's no deleting your spells in this version of the game, so choose wisely.
The LIMIT of the Red Wizard, REFRESH, allows them to recharge any other party member's LIMIT. The usefulness is dependent on whether or not you have someone else with a useful limit. Obviously no good for solos or single class challenges.
Overall thoughts:
In the original game, Red Mage was a strong class from beginning to end and that is no different in FFR. Sure, it can't do anything really new and fancy, but when the old stuff works and they can do the best of it more often with CONVERT, do you really need anything else? Some people argued in FF1 that they fall off by the end, which is only objectively true in vanilla and definitely not true in FFR. I did notice the lower INT insofar as they were doing less damage with spells and spellcasting items than my dedicated mage characters, but given that they were perfectly fine with it not functioning, it doesn't make too big a difference.
Personal thoughts:
I do wish it got some of the new spells to keep the idea that it's supposed to give you a taste of everything. I appreciate it not being nerfed at all except indirectly, however. CONVERT was a nice way to hit on the versatility angle of the class.
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White Mage/White Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
If you're looking for something new and exciting out of Renaissance, don't bother looking at White Mage. They are very similar to how they work in vanilla, still having a major focus on healing and buffing spells. They lean into the former more with the addition of their CLERIC trait - increasing the accuracy of healing spells and thus the chance they'll restore more HP. Furthermore, their floor is increased by 50%, increasing their reliability. For example, CUR3 heals 66-132 damage normally, but the range before INT will be 99-132 with a White Mage. This trait also works with the HEAL casting items later on, so they'll heal 18-24.
2.0 added the PRAY combat skill. This works interestingly: it heals 1-10% of maxHP. Each subsequent use will increase the max range by 5, so the second use will restore 1-15% HP. It caps at 30%. Nice on empty turns early game if also unreliable. Itemcasts will be more consistent mid game, but PRAY spamming has a chance to restore more on high HP characters in the late game, especially if you're higher level (NG+ especially tends toward this) or use it across multiple turns.
Post-Class Change:
White Wizards gain the RERAISE battle command upon promotion. This can be freely cast on any ally without any penalty. It will instantly revive them with 25% of their HP should they be reduced to zero in battle. It's a solid command if you have a good sense for when to use it. Note that SOFT and LIFE still don't work to revive in battle. That's a new class privileges thing...unless they go to the ruins of Melmond's clinic (the building on the east of town) and examine the center to earn the REVIVALIST trait, which permits the latter at least.
Fun trivia: in early demo versions, they had DIVINE SEAL, a counterpart to ELEMENTAL SEAL that boosted healing. It was replaced with the above for being bad.
Their LIMIT skill is BENEDICTION. It will fully heal all allies and remove 'common' status ailments in the process. It is subject to turn order, but it's a nice panic button. It just can't revive anything, so hope or make sure it triggers before anyone falls.
Overall thoughts:
White Mage does what it always has done, gives you large amounts of in-battle group healing and party revival (one of three classes who can revive). It may not be the most exciting class, especially compared to the new jobs or even the buffed versions of its fellow original jobs, but it's still the best at what it does. CLERIC makes it even better at doing this. Of course infinitely renewable HEAL potions and the Heal Staff still exist, but they're better at using the latter than anyone and can use their personal version of it from the start.
Personal thoughts:
Textbook boring but practical. A healer has always been optional in FF1 and the quality of life changes to buying and using items in Renaissance make it even simpler to go without one. They're still likely to end up in many challenge run parties and will never let you down if you choose to use them.
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Black Mage/Black Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
Like their counterpart monochrome mage, the base Black Mage plays very similar in practice. The new SORCERER trait will increase the accuracy of direct damage spells and thus the chance of them dealing double damage. Status spells are unaffected and it's unclear from the wording specifying elemental spells if the non-elemental NUKE works with it too. As of 2.0, they have a new battle command: BLUFF. It doubles all allies' INT for one turn. This is horrendously flawed. They need INT-using allies in the first place for this to be of any use and ideally high INT. You'll nearly always get more damage if the Black Mage attacks as well and since it only lasts one turn, they won't get to take advantage of it. The only use is conserving spell charges in magic heavy parties before getting spellcasting items, or if you set them off-limits.
That said, since INT now functions (it boosts spell damage by (INT÷2)% and adds (INT×2.5) to the status accuracy formula) and they gain a point of it every level, a Black Mage will deal somewhat more damage than they could in the vanilla game. I would also note of their high starting LUCK of 10, but the low rate of guaranteed increases can make them fall behind quickly. Since TMPR now works, they can use that to buff physical attackers along with FAST. They can even do it themselves later with SABR or the Power Gauntlets if you want to meme.
Post-Class Change:
Besides the usual expansion of their spell list, Black Wizards gain the ELEMENTAL SEAL command. This ability makes the next black spell cast ignore resistances and do maximum damage. It does take a turn to use it however, and most enemies have at least one element you can hit them in anyway. So it's simply okay with that...but it also works on status spells while increasing their hit rate. Things can really get ugly if you lean into abusing that fact. Unless the enemy has a trait specifically rendering them immune to a status, you can hit them with it.
They can visit Matoya after class change to learn the PRIMING trait. This boosts elemental spell base damage by 50% for each spell of the same element cast during the battle. A nice little bonus on certain enemies (if they survive the first cast) and bosses (which is just KRAKEN and certain Evoker-exclusive ones). Definitely better for NG+ overall though where they can start using it right after beating GARLAND.
They have a very interesting LIMIT called MANAFONT. This makes it so spell charges aren't expended for three rounds, and don't even have to be there in the first place. This one is questionable without the right setup and circumstances, and because of it will usually boil down to using NUKE without grinding to level 25. Like for bosses, FAST on physical attackers isn't necessarily the best anymore with the changes to critical hits, but it still gets the job done. Against randoms, this is mostly a waste.
Overall thoughts:
While spellcasting items exist and have unlimited charges, Black Mages are still great at making large groups of enemies fall down in a hurry. Don't sleep on their status or instant death stuff either; they have a lot more use in NG+ when "instantly dead" is more efficient than damage. There's many more spellcaster options now, but they'll hold their own thanks to their very high INT and their skills. And when all else fails? FAST still exists as long as you have physical attackers.
Personal thoughts:
Fun to actually use this and not have it be mostly obsoleted by Red. ELEMENTAL SEAL was what they needed to not get walled by enemies with resistances (without weird stuff like QAKE vs MudGOLs anyway). It's balanced nicely: it takes a turn but you get reliable damage to make up for it. MANAFONT is basically just "use NUKE early" however. I miss the hairy wizard design, too. At least the original sprite is maintained for classic mode.
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Blue Mage/Blue Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
The next six new jobs were in FFR from the start. Blue Mage is very comparable to Red Mage. Unlike the FF5 version which just presents like a part-time physical class, FFR's version does indeed have the STR to use weapons effectively. They also get the Chain at the start. In fact, their equipment draw is very similar to Reds, which means the Silver and Flame/Ice swords! Of course, while they can hold their own they're still inferior to pure fighters, so that's where their spells come in to distinguish them.
There are 26 enemy abilities in FF1 and Blue Mage is capable of learning 24 of them: they only miss out on INK and TORNADO. Everything else is spread across their eight levels of magic. There is nothing that isn't in vanilla FF1, so don't expect classics like White Wind and Mighty Guard to show up. Notably, they get plenty of fire-elemental AoE in the first few levels. Perfect for burning through the myriad of undead in the Marsh Cave and Earth Cave. For convenience and because many of these don't show up for some time (and in some cases, are only normally on CHAOS!), various NPCs scattered across the world (including some who only show with a Blue Mage) will offer you the chance to fight a monster who will immediately use a Blue spell in an ambush at the start of the fight. Most of the spells can be learned in this fashion, but not all of them, so you'll have to go hunting to fill out the spell list. You also don't have to learn them this way if you're doing a challenge run.
One annoying problem with Blue Magic is that they only have a chance to learn the spell, something that just isn't an issue in any official turn-based game in the series - except FFT, but even the Blue Mage style exclusive spells there (Ultima and Zodiac) are a guaranteed learn. The invisible odds increase with level. Pretty questionable design decision there - it apparently comes from FF11, a favorite of Ozmo's. I incurred several resets just because I lost the dice roll. One tool they have is SKILL LURE which will redirect single target monster skills to the Blue Mage for the duration of the turn. This can't be used for tanking directly; it only affects skills and not physicals or magic. Just to make this command more useless, only GAZE and DAZZLE are single target skills that can't be learned from a (friendly) NPC, and they still adhere to targeting rules. Just put the Blue Mage in the first slot. However, it has a secondary purpose: doubling the odds of an enemy using a skill. This has some big-brained use for manipulating what monsters do. Because of the NPCs, it's more limited otherwise.
Post-Class Change:
Unlike Reds, Blues don't get Defense Sword access post class-change. They'll need to use the later Sun Sword instead (or the new Beast Sword which is also in Mirage). They gain a new command skill, CONVERGENCE, allowing them to cast a multi-target spell on a single target to double its power, inflicting fatigued on the Blue Wizard after. Good on bosses, and can outdamage swording.
Their LIMIT gives them a 100% chance of learning a Blue skill and makes the next Blue skill cast with double accuracy. So here's the thing with this: by the time you get to class change, you'll already have learned most of the spells if you're diligent. In fact, there's a big lack of NPCs with them in the north; there is only the one in Lefein. It is good insurance when hunting their L8 spells, which are all stuck on rare monsters. I would also say it's good for low level, but they'll still need spell charges to use them after. That's still a design problem with FFR Blue Mages in general though, I feel that the diceroll aspect simply should not exist. The accuracy buff is the better component and goes well with their status skills. It can make their instant kills even more potent than they already are.
Note for completionists, the L8 spells can be hellish to get. One is on WarMECH, who at least isn't too difficult to manipulate (encounters 7, 20, and 24 after a hard reset). As for INFERNO, you can either pair the job with Evoker to have an easy source or search for a new monster on Sea Shrine B5 in the area between the big room and KRAKEN's room that sometimes can be harder to find than IronGOL: the slot 8 (rarest) encounter in the second-to-last room of the game. TOXIC is absolutely not a cool last minute thing like the Masmune, that's for sure.
Overall thoughts:
This class plays a lot like the Red Mage at the beginning. Strong equipment and capable of casting or slashing as the situation demands. Unlike Red, Blue gets no support spells like LIFE, instead learning more instant death spells (which can be effective, especially on NG+). They can hit hard with their spells with CONVERGENCE, and there's always spellcasting items to fall back on. The problem with not being guaranteed to learn the spells aside, you don't have to go looking too hard for most thanks to the NPCs with monsters who can teach them. It's up to you whether to go looking for the rest. I'd certainly get NUCLEAR at least.
Personal thoughts:
Blue Mage was the class I was most looking forward to using in FFR, and I hate to say that it was a little disappointing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed unleashing POISON on my enemies and throwing out the game's infamous instant death attacks; one-shotting WarMECH with GLARE was an utter delight. The selection just left a little to be desired. I suppose FF1's enemy skills are part of the problem; plus it'd be hard to implement something defensive the way they're set up. But I sure wouldn't have complained if STINGER or SCORCH or TOXIC got thrown out for something new to FFR to give them more flexibility. Might be fun in challenge runs. And again, that non-guarantee on learning Blue Magic has to go, seriously. MMOs have a different design philosophy that doesn't translate well to a traditional turn-based RPG, there is a very good reason why it's not a thing you have to contend with in them.
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Dancer/Rhythmist
Pre-Class Change:
Dancers are a lightly armored class with high AGI; it is guaranteed to increase on every level for them as of 2.1. They can equip scarves, which are mechanically shields with various bonuses. They can make a case as a memetic party leader as long as you don't mind their frailty - the LUCK and AGI of the first slot character determines ambushes, and they get a lot of both. But their real purpose is their pseudo spells, dances.
They can learn new dances by talking to NPC dancers, like a smaller scale version of what the Bard does. They will sometimes need to achieve objectives before they can learn some of them. Dances work on a system of bravery (or confidence as one of the NPCs puts it). The dancer starts with a certain amount every battle, increasing as their level does. This also increases by landing hits with FIGHT, allowing them to more reliably perform their dances which expend bravery. There's a chance of failure, wasting the dancer's turn (but not bravery) if it's below 100%. Success rates in excess of 100% will increase the potency of a dance while expending some but not all extra. One of their best in the early game is a strong HP and status heal, which is solid for the entire game. The first is a drain that is very effective on the SCUMs in the Marsh Cave. Another you can get in Crescent after beating the VAMPIRE is a full-party TMPR. Despite being classified as special magic, dances are unaffected by the silence status. They are affected by darkness however, reducing their base chance to work significantly!
The problem with Dancers is that they kind of suck on offense. This leans toward them supporting with their dances, but if they miss their attacks, they don't gain bravery. This makes them somewhat unreliable until they reach 2 hits. With physicals, they are like a worse Thief, having very similar strength and the same 5+2 per level hit%. Knives are their sole weapon type, including some new ones exclusive to them, the Bard, and Archer. None are really great in power; they'll just be doing chip damage before Melmond, and still trail behind every other physical attacker until after class change. Even the new Mage classes can hit harder with Iron Staff than a Dancer with Large Dagger! Their best weapon, the Assassn Dagger, is locked behind the Thief's SEARCH, and Thief itself might want to make use of it instead.
Post-Class Change:
As they continue to get more dances, including a full-party FAST, Rhythmists gain some tools to help them build bravery faster. One of these is the FLURRY command, executing a physical attack with heavily lowered damage but significantly raised hit%. Since BRAVERY BOOSTs are based on number of hits, this helps them gain it much faster than attacking normally. (Trivia: There was originally a command called FEVER that increased bravery boosts for two turns)
But if they do want to attack normally, they also become solid physical attackers in their own right thanks to the DUAL-WIELD trait. This allows them to equip two weapons at once; the second in menu order will add half of its damage and its full hit% to the Rhythmist's stats. This usually works out to putting them a touch behind the strongest physical forces. Besides Assassn, their best weapon is the Catclaw from Gaia's weapon shop: 22 power, 35% hit, and 65000G. Hope you don't have too many mages to spend money on. Especially since they'll also need to shell out 300000G for one of their dances. If money is tight, the Ancient Dagger in Sea Shrine B1 has equal power with only 5 less hit%, and using the Icepick as the second weapon will only lose 3 points of attack and 10 hit%. LAST WALTZ, their final dance, can also become a ridiculous nuke whose only problem is needing to learn all the others and beat a tough boss - which at least gives back half of the cost of the pricey dance.
They can also gain a hidden trait by speaking with Arylon after learning all eight dances. DETERMINATION gives a 25% boost to bravery should a dance fail. It mostly makes sure if you're trying to use a dance on turn 1, it will certainly go off on turn 2. Note that while you can learn all dances before promotion, you cannot get this trait until you do.
Their LIMIT, DUENDE, allows for any dance to be executed guaranteed and prevents bravery reduction for three rounds. Like most, this is something to throw out during boss fights. It can be very much abused with some of the stronger dances, particularly the last one which deals high damage.
Overall thoughts:
Dancers are a class that gets better as the game goes along. They work best in parties with multiple physical attackers, and can function as them in the mid to late game. Two of their best songs lean towards boosting FIGHT damage, and they can bring some single target healing. Furthermore, the 300000G song (why?) can get in the way of a magic budget for any class that has to buy them. You can at least comfortably spare one in same party; grinding, making sacrifices, or being on NG+ can also help. Another serious issue is that their dances aren't reliable on turn 1 until high levels (25+ for the first three). Other classes can use the abilities consistently on turn 1 as long as they beat turn order, but Dancers have to do that and may just end up falling flat on their face.
Personal thoughts:
I wasn't expecting to use a class that supports physical attackers in a party of three physical attackers, but in that sense, I got to see the class at its absolute best. When I used it in a more balanced party, I certainly noticed its flaws. The dances weren't quite as well-rounded as the Bard's songs: they were all over the place in effectiveness. Honestly? Not a big fan. It's interesting, and I don't think it's bad like Evoker or Dark Knight - that strong late game eventually comes. But being one of two classes in FFR that have explicit anti-synergy with other classes is a huge strike against it. Not to mention the frustration with dances failing.
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Geomancer/Elementalist
Pre-Class Change:
I get the feeling that Ozmo hated how these things functioned in FF5 (who wouldn't?) and wanted to live out a revenge fantasy, because this one is pretty absurdly good. It's a magic class statistically, which can use the Buckler shield just because. There are six different kinds of bells scattered throughout the game that boost their elemental abilities when equipped on their respective terrain; this only works on Geomancer spells and not itemcasts. By turning these in to a man in Pravoka, you can gain the Blessed Bell, which always boosts all elemental abilities and has a...very special secondary effect. You can only do this with one set, even if you have a Thief to get a second.
In vanilla FF1, mages were limited by their spell charges. Geomancer gets unlimited use of their spells from the get-go via their battle command, TERRAIN. This rolls a random spell from the current terrain, including some hidden ones that can only be used this way. Unlike FF5, TERRAIN spells are often useful. If you choose to roll the dice, the odds are good you're going to get something decent. If you don't want to roll the dice, you can always cast them directly with the MAGIC command. They all start with 1 spell charge, but gain an additional charge for the first on the list on every level ending in 5 and for the other three on every level ending in 0. This does mean they have very limited direct castings compared to other mages, but TERRAIN can sometimes restore used charges. Their spells also scale really nicely and can be boosted by a matching elemental bell. The healing ones are especially monstrous, able to act as a HEL3 or better in the later game. However, Sea Shrine, Floating Castle, and Temple of Fiends Return don't have such a spell inherent to them (at least on the basic list of on-demand casts). Also though this is only relevant on the overworld and Mirage Tower/Floating Castle: different TERRAINs don't share spell slots.
The class sags a little in the midgame. The Fire/Ice/Water dungeons all have a TERRAIN set matching their elements, which isn't very good on the enemies within. But two things keep them capable. The first is spellcasting items, still just as spammable as ever (unfortunately don't benefit from INT as of 2.1.1). The other is what they get after class change. If you're doing a no class change challenge, however, the class will noticeably start to falter offensively.
Their field ability is to prevent tile damage while they are the active character. Note that you still won't have random encounters while on these tiles, making it nothing but a benefit if an inconvenience if you have a lot of classes with field abilities you might want to use. Damaging tiles are only found in Gurgu Volcano and the Ice Cave, so it's of limited yet welcome scope when needed.
Post-class change:
Elementalists gain access to another field ability, SAMPLE. They can use this on a map to get a second set of spells from the terrain it's from and take them on the go. So you can bring water or ice into the Volcano to hit the enemies' weakness. You can bring extra healing where you need it. You can take some of the excellent support spells. And so on. There's a ton of versatility with at least thirteen different terrain sets. For no other reason than (rightful) balance, you can't use a SAMPLE in the terrain it's from.
The LIMIT is GEOSTORM, a nuke that hits all elements. It normally does fair damage. But with the Blessed Bell, this becomes a literal "I win" button on any non NG+ battle in the game, overkilling them for tens of thousands of damage. Use at your own risk!
Overall thoughts:
They're a solid class from beginning to end. They have a weak spot in the Ice Cave (and Gurgu if you go before class change), and their biggest flaw comes from limited spell charges, so try to only use MAGIC when you need to. I don't even think no class change hurts them that much because if the TERRAIN spells they're in don't measure up, they can just fall back on Zeus or whatever. I found myself comparing it to Red Mage in terms of versatility once they class changed. They can also support physical and magical attackers alike. Definitely a high point of the new classes.
Personal thoughts:
I had fun with this one. The nonsense that is Blessed Bell GEOSTORM aside, I don't really think this is that unbalanced. A mage with as many charges as they want is any mage with a spellcasting item. Geomancer can just do it sooner and in their own way. The spell charge issue is a thing and offensive spells have trouble sometimes in the elemental dungeons, so they have some shackles (granted one that's there's ways around as I mentioned). The healing scaling was a little ridiculous, but limited uses held them back in the early game and the late game dungeons don't have one innate. Hidden TERRAIN skills annoy me a bit, but that's just my OCD. They'd definitely be a good pick in a Living off the Land challenge, and pretty thematic to use the land to attack!
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Lancer/Dragoon
Pre-Class Change:
They wear heavy armor and use lances, a new weapon type. They have all the stats you would expect from a physically oriented class. In fact, their growths are a one-to-one copy of Warriors save for not having as many strong HP ups. But can't use shields, not even the ProCape!
Their JUMP command removes them from combat for one round and deals guaranteed critical hits upon landing. They then gain fatigued status for one turn, preventing them from using it consecutively. It has about 32 less hit% than a normal FIGHT and cannot benefit from FAST multipliers, but is also performed with higher attack. On average, one JUMP and one attack does a little more on average than three regular attacks. If those regular attacks don't kill anyway, of course. As always, the conundrum of Lancer/Dragoon is that it's a tanky class that doesn't do much tanking due to leaping up and leaving other party members to get hit. It's plenty good enough without JUMP should it come to that, but it can also be solved by party composition. It can supposedly fail due to the description of a lategame weapon found in the Floating Castle, but I've never seen this happen. Only guess is that it's referring to missing, which can happen early on but is very unlikely by the time you can get the weapon.
Post-Class Change:
Dragoons gain the SUPER JUMP command. This one will hit all enemies instead of just one but inflicts fatigued for two turns instead. By talking to the dragon in Onrac then killing 100 enemies with jumps, the Leaping Boots can obtained from it. These can be equipped to make JUMP and SUPER JUMP attacks activate and resolve at the start of each round. It makes them much more consistent and helps them beat back action economy. They must be equipped and are in their own special equipment category. That said they'll do fine even without it, and you only get one set of boots should you have multiple Dragoons.
They gain an additional trait as well, DRAGON KILLER. This simply causes all of their weapons to behave as if they're effective against dragons. It results in a modest 4-8 extra damage per hit on the relevant targets. Just a small extra thematic thing in the grand scheme of things.
Their LIMIT is SKY HIGH. This will execute a SUPER JUMP attack at the start of the round (regardless of boots), and prevent fatigued status on any jump attack for three rounds after. Turns still need to be spent in the air and they still count towards the limit, so this isn't as good as it seems.
Overall thoughts:
Lancer is the simplest new class in Renaissance. They're easy to understand, they work effectively, and there's nothing particularly complex or overly tedious about them. They sort of stand out in that regard against every other new class. This doesn't make them ineffective, not by any means. JUMP is fantastic at tearing through many of the game's high defense bosses; it and SUPER JUMP are one of the few commands that manages to defy the action economy problem some jobs have. Just don't treat them as a tank. They're closer to the Black Belt in the original: they're a damage dealer first and foremost, not a pure Fighter substitute. Even if they stay on the ground, the lack of shields and HP growths ensures they won't be as good at absorbing damage.
Personal thoughts:
After all the complex mechanics of other classes, it was nice to have something straightforward. It was funny that this ended up being among the last classes I ended up playing, which only made it stand out more. It was good. But I do wish they could use shields, they could in official Final Fantasy games.
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Trainer/Beastmaster
Pre-Class Change:
Without factoring in their commands, Trainers are solid and moderately bulky physical attackers. They have the AXE PROFICIENCY trait, which gives a flat +10 hit% rate to axes. This means they can get 2 hits with the Hand Axe at level 6, like many classes can with the Silver Sword but for a fraction of the price. Some new ones exist, like analogues to the Flame/Ice swords found in the midgame. They also have whips as a unique weapon type, generally decent power with high hit% and universally add 25% to the CONTROL chance, though they are otherwise weaker than axes. Their armor selection is solid: anything that can use Chain is, really. They can notably get a Bone Mail in Marsh Cave with a Thief, an Iron Armor analogue, but can otherwise wear the Silver Armor post-KEY and get a 32 absorb one in Gurgu. They even get the Dragon Mail after class change. They can't equip the Aegis Shield to go with it for as much protection as you can get without a Ribbon, though it still makes them a good candidate to go without one. Also note their high starting LUCK and consistent growths (4/5 levels have it), which makes them solid at RUNning.
As long as they're your visible character, their LURE ability will be active. This says it increases the chances of rare encounters appearing. What it does mechanically is give them a 50% chance of skipping over spots on the encounter table so they get through it to the rare slots faster (it won't skip over 7 or 8). It's mainly something to help a little with Blue Mage and the Bestiary. Or a super high IQ thing to game the encounter table.
Their command is CONTROL, which is one part what it says and one part instant death skill. The odds increase the higher the Trainer's level and the lower the enemy HP - from testing and talking, I speculate that enemy Morale might also play a role in the formula. Not all enemies can be affected by this - the game will let you know if an enemy can't be controlled, or if it failed due to the enemy having too high HP or just missing. A lot more than you think can be - basically everything not undead, mechanical, humanoid, or a boss. Notable targets are the WIZARDs, dragons, and elementals (EARTH, etc). Controlled monsters seem to be abnormally strong: I had a SORCERER hit another for over a hundred damage as an example. This only makes them better in most cases. An enemy under your control is considered defeated. Simply having controlled an enemy in a battle (whether it ends the battle enthralled, dies, or time expires) will also give you bonus experience equal to the amount of experience they give out, effectively doubling the payout - this can be earned with multiple enemies, but recontrolling an enemy won't give the bonus again. I found it to be fairly reliable, and the monster attacks are pretty ridiculously strong. Other monsters will sometimes attack the controlled one; this will not break the control but they can harm/kill it. Speaking of, you can't: attacks get redirected and AoE won't touch them. It wears off after two turns, but hopefully the battle is over by then. And if not, cast it again!
Post-Class Change:
Beastmasters are able to use the CATCH command to bring a monster into their stock - this works on the same mechanics as CONTROL. They can then CALL MONSTER in any battle as long as there's room for them on the battlefield. It will appear on the field and then acts like it's a controlled monster, including taking the Beastmaster's turn to issue orders. There's a sidequest to catch a T REX (a 1/64 monster in the north, soft reset a lot) that allows you to buy various consumables to buff caught monsters' stats for one battle. Thankfully unlike the Ninjas' scrolls, these are affordable. I found this to be cool but a flawed gimmick. It takes a turn to summon the monster, it takes the Beastmaster's action and they can actually hit pretty hard on their own. The issue of needing room can be a problem, but at least they fit in with bosses. I feel they're best suited for meat shields. Monsters do not recover HP except when caught, though there is one loophole: you can catch them again to refresh. Furthermore, they can potentially escape? Never seen it myself, apparently it happens if the Beastmaster dies, but glitchier instances have been reported.
Their LIMIT is FAMILIAR, guaranteeing the next CONTROL attempt will be successful if it can work at all. Considering CONTROL already has very good odds of working, you're usually better off just using it twice. It's not even decent in low level because the double experience goes against that.
Overall thoughts:
If you use CONTROL consistently, it adds up to a lot of extra experience over the course of the playthrough. If you can't (or won't), they are still a solid physically attacking class on par with the Red Wizard with some excellent equipment options. LURE works well with Blue Mage to help get to rare encounters faster, though it could be better than what it is. It's just a shame they don't get much of consequence post class change, but what they already had works.
Personal thoughts:
I enjoyed using this class. They were strong and solid throughout the whole game. The big problem with them in FF5 was that the monster cannon needed to be constantly reloaded. Making them focus on CONTROL and giving you a lot of incentive to use it helped (the hit rate is great!), and I like the idea of CATCH even if the execution could use polish. What I'd do to fix it is letting the monster act immediately and finding a way to resolve the space issue; allowing you to heal them somehow would be lesser priority but would still help.
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Evoker/Summoner
Pre-Class Change:
These are certainly in the same spot as other mages in the base game. Great when using their limited spell charges, dead weight otherwise, good candidate for spellcasting items when you get them. However, even when using their spell charges, they're of questionable use. Instead of buying spells, when the Evoker is the lead, you can find portals to the Astral Plane (Trivia: in early demo builds, this required "dust" items). Here, you can fight summons to gain them for use. But it's not all good news.
All of the damaging summon spells except GOBLIN take two turns to cast. These spells will lock down the Evoker for the duration and expend the spell charge when it triggers, so you don't have to worry about wasting charges if the enemies die first. Which has a good chance of happening. There's no turn order benefits, so your other characters might get to move twice before the summon goes off. It's really obnoxious. RAMUH for example is functionally two LIT2s cast for one spell charge, after the turn of waiting. But in midgame, I could instead use the Zeus Gauntlet to start dealing damage right away. And those two LIT2s (or even one of them) might be good enough anyway! Overkill damage gets you nothing in this game. This made them a bit awkward to use their spells; they were best against bosses or big chunky enemies because of it, where taking multiple turns didn't matter as much. Evokers shine better with their support summons. Two that stand out as distinct are UNICORN and PHOENIX. The first is L3 and besides acting like a HEAL spell, also dispels negative status including petrification. PHOENIX meanwhile has a charge turn (the only support summon that does) and is L8, but restores 50% of Max HP on all allies and can even revive them in battle. Just remember that these cannot be used outside of battle. 2.0 added perks during the charge turns for these spells; however, they're minor and unreliable. The EN-portions only add a little extra damage per physical hit, and while the A-portions are better, turn order makes them very unreliable in shielding your party.
Another issue with Evoker is the location of many of their summons being deep in certain dungeons, starting with TITAN in the Earth Cave. This necessitates planning and setting aside resources for two boss fights, if not being prepared to go through a dungeon twice. I don't really like this aspect about it. Worse, these fights are tough, especially for when you find them. As an example, IFRIT in Gurgu has 1200HP, which is more than anything in the base game except CHAOS himself. And though elemental, his special has as much power as NUKE! Other summon bosses hit just as hard. They're good to pair with a White or Green Mage for this reason for A-spells. At least, dying in the Astral Plane doesn't mean a game over. Others are weird gimmick fights.
Post-class change:
CALL, their battle command after class change, is a massive joke. It casts a random Summon spell the caster knows; they do not need to expend a spell charge (or even have charges for them in the first place). Anything can be called, including CARBUNCLE which "helpfully" gives your team Reflect, which is horrible news if you're casting anything at all on your party except other summon spells. Furthermore, not only do charging turns apply, but the Summoner ends up Fatigued after, a special status which prevents using battle commands and I hope that's it. I never used this unless I was bored and felt I could get away with it. If you try to game this, it can be useful. It's most feasible on NG+ where the command is available from the start and you can just run GOBLIN.
The only spell they can learn that the Evoker cannot is a big one. You can get BAHAMUT by going to the big dragon after beating all fiends and changing class. It has a charge turn like most do, but it deals a base 600 damage. That's three times as strong as a NUKE (though really only 1.5x as strong because it's used over two turns, before factoring in the below). I get the feeling this one was especially balanced for NG+...
Their LIMIT, ASTRAL FLOW, allows them to resummon the last monster summoned instantly at the start of the round with no charge time. This is best saved for big boss fights like most LIMIT skills. It also makes BAHAMUT even more disgusting.
Overall thoughts:
They're a gimmick class that has a lot of issues, and how the numbers work out almost certainly points to them being made with New Game+ in mind - and having played one there, they can indeed function better when all enemy HP is doubled. The damaging summons are questionable between charging and damage, but the utility ones are fantastic. BAHAMUT works well (almost too well) if you get high enough to use the L8 charges, but is obviously limited in what you can unleash it on between coming at the end and the issue of needing spell charges for L8 spells in the first place. Some see the extra bosses as more content for a playthrough, but it's still an extra hassle they have to go through. It could certainly use improvement, but it's not completely awful.
Personal thoughts:
This one wasn't very fun to play. The charge turns made this unappealing. I'd rather summons have charged instantly and do half damage. At the midgame I just started using Zeus Gauntlet as their offense. BAHAMUT by contrast is a ridiculous overpowered nuke. There's something funny yet wrong about being able to OHKO a WarMECH with sheer damage. The summon bosses were...okay? They added a decent amount of content as frustrating as some of them were. They have interesting use in a Living Off The Land type challenge as one of three caster classes with spell access. But those other two caster classes are so much better in that regard (not to mention able to get their spells easier) that it's kind of a sad joke. I do like the idea behind this class. It fits in nicely as a classic FF job and adds a bit to the game besides just itself. Even with the buffs to charging, I feel it's still a contender for the worst job in the game.
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Time Mage/Time Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
They made their debut in 1.2. These mages have a subset of Black Magic encompassing some vanilla time-related spells and several of their own. Accompanying this is the RESIST TIME trait, blocking the few spells and skills of the element along with Slow, Sleep, and Paralysis (!). Their battle command is EGRESS, which acts like Reset from FF5. It has some niche use if a battle goes awry and the Time Mage is still standing and can get it off. Another interesting utility function of this is that it rerolls whether or not the encounter is an ambush. I used it to good effect to prevent a bit of unwanted damage. Just hope you don't reroll into something worse!
They act much like a pseudo Black Mage in the early game. BURST and BURST2 are time-elemenal counterparts to the Black Mage's L1 and L3 offensive spells, although they cap out there (no third tier version). They have several status spells in the time-element including those, which aren't resisted by anything but two new Evoker-exclusive enemies, a Spellblade-exclusive enemy, and CHAOS. They also get WARP pre-class change, which can help skip around in the Ice Cave. DEMI and DEMI2 also stand out: 50% damage on randoms which can be useful sometimes, and only 25% on bosses which is still enough to chunk the bigger ones. It will need other attacks to help finish them but these make for excellent alpha strikes. As well as the absurd GAIN; this used to be a L1 spell and is now L4, and can boost spell damage by a lot. As you would expect, they get also FAST for physical attackers.
But one of their most noteworthy spells is FLOAT, which is L3. This allows the party to levitate for 36 steps. This does not just let them go over damage tiles. You can cross river tiles, Ice Cave holes, and even avoid encounters - including spike encounters (e.g. the EYE, the fiend rematches, etc)! You will instantly game over if FLOAT runs out over a river without the CANOE, but you get a warning a step before it expires and can recast it at that point. With 2 charges and at least 3 HOUSEs (one for the trip there and two to make it back, ideally one more to use it before the cave itself), it's possible to get into the Ice Cave before setting foot in the Marsh Cave. There is also softlock protection included by making any saves you make in a FLOAT-accessed area temporary. It's funny being able to sequence break, and if you can make it through the Ice Cave at a low level you honestly deserve the reward, but it's nothing too ridiculous by itself.
Post-Class Change:
...that is, until they get TELE, a L6 spell exclusive to after class change. On its own, this spell is inoffensive. A personal EXIT spell with a quirk that it can be used without spell charges (though they need L6 charges in the first place) and takes you to the ship, the airship, or the last used inn. But by using it in Castle Ordeals, SET TELEPOINT is unlocked. This allows the Time Wizard to put a warp anywhere and return back at will. Taken to the extreme, you can FLOAT until you're out of spell charges, set a telepoint, TELE back to get more, and repeat to go through dungeons with no encounters except bosses. Even without that abuse, you can effectively use this as a mid-dungeon save point that's better than the Green Wizard's. Just place it down, cast TELE to warp to an inn, sleep to recover spell charges, and recast TELE to jump right back in. Yeah, this is busted and can snap the game in half.
Even without those spells, Time Wizard gets the absurd DOUBLECAST. This is a battle command that can be used on any other caster in the party. It triggers instantly at the start of the current round and makes their spell (not itemcast) cast twice for a single spell charge. It inflicts fatigued status for a turn (it used to not do so), but it's still crazy. If you can still combine this with GAIN and other buffs, this can get ugly in a hurry. My L18 Black Wizard hit CHAOS for over 1850 damage with NUKE in a single round between these and its own buffs. They also have a treat for physical attackers, FAST2. This will triple the target ally's hit%.
So what if you restrain yourself from this broken nonsense? In that case, Time Wizard actually falters a little. Because the BURST spells cap at second-tier power, they don't have any big nukes they can toss out like any other offensive mage. Most of their mid-late game spells are weirdly gimmicky. Then again, spellcasting items exist, and anyone can ride those to success. Their own offense is otherwise mediocre. They get COMET at L7 (usable without class change) and METEOR at L8, but they're random damage and seem to be heavily affected by enemy magic defense which a lot of late game bosses have a lot of.
Their LIMIT is COMPRESS TIME. This gives them three turns to do whatever they want while no one else can move or do anything. You can set up, throw out damaging spells, or do whatever else you want while the enemies remain helpless. It's as strong or as weak as you want to make it.
Overall thoughts:
Time Mage is a great class, but maybe too good. At the very least, the time-elemental stuff can let you hit enemies like LICH with status where no other classes can which is a fun niche. At its most absurd, it plays by its own rules and doesn't care what Final Fantasy 1 thinks. It can do well in parties with physical classes just because of FAST spells, but GAIN and DOUBLECAST (if you dare use it) tends it towards supporting a mage. But if you're reining it in, this class is unfortunately nothing special.
Personal thoughts:
Completely stupid. It's either smashing the game to pieces or it's just there. There are a lot of things in FFR that can break the game balance, but Time Mage pushes it to ridiculous levels. Don't get me wrong. The early game was great with its particular brand of status abuse. And it was a thrill to lean into the heaviest abuse of this class, but that was nothing more than an ultimately unsatisfying novelty. I have very mixed feelings about this class. It's fun and strong, but it takes it way too far to where I felt dirty about using them at best and didn't feel like I was actually playing the game at worst. When I avoided those, what it was left with was either solid to not very good.
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Green Mage/Green Wizard
Pre-Class Change:
Also debuting in 1.2, Green Mage occupies an unusual spot in the game. It is a support class with a focus on buffs. However, as any White Mage can attest to, these are situational. You're not going to cast ALIT every battle (and indeed won't have the spell charges to), and a lot of it can be obsoleted by Ribbons. It's kind of the same thing that affects White Mages actually: they can't do much when not needed so they'll probably get reduced to using spellcasting items. It's also worth noting that HARDEN and BLINK can be done by Evoker on everyone, as can REGEN, but Green does get stronger versions of the latter.
They can weaponize some of these buffs, dispelling them with their EXUVIATION battle command in exchange for AoE non-elemental damage. Only anti-spells can be dispelled this way, including status ones like AMUT and their LIMIT. The problem is, this does chip damage at most early on, and later you can just use spellcasting items which will cleanly outdamage them. Even with more buffs dispelled at once it can end up doing piddly damage, not to mention it makes the action economy problem with this command even worse. Their other ability which was introduced in 2.0 is DRUIDIC BOUNDARY. It sort of exists. It has a 50-50 shot of healing an ally by 1-5% of their MaxHP when using an enhancing spell/ability. This is not a lot: 5% of 200 for example is 10. I barely noticed this one existed. Contrast with the REGEN line which can get pretty disgusting: they scale 10%/15%/20%/25% at each level which can restore a lot in drawn out battles.
So what else are they good at? Tanking, believe it or not. Green Mages get an obscene amount of HP for a magic class, and they have RUSE available. Their HP increases a bit more gradually compared to some of the more frontloaded classes, but by the endgame they're just below the healthiest melee classes. Factoring in NG+, they are one of five classes that can hit the 999 cap; they even exceed Lancer and Dark Knight in the 30s to ultimately end up with the third-highest HP on average. They have acceptable AGI and LUCK for a lead, too. Their unique poison (and later stone) resistances give some protection, and if they do go down? Oh well, you didn't lose a damage dealer. Just give them a spellcasting item and they're set.
That said, one cool thing is that they can cast WALL before class change. This obviously only comes into play during challenge runs that restrict class change. But it's there!
Post-Class Change:
RESIST STONE joins the list of Green Wizard's abilities. Alongside is the ACCRETION trait and BENEFACTION command, which (try to) lean into their tank potential. The former adds up damage taken to a certain unspecified limit. You can use the latter to pop a heal spread across all party members; for example, if 100 damage is taken, it will heal 25HP on everyone. Green Wizard has very high HP for a magic class, but this is still generally more effective as a small-scale panic button in a full party. In solos or with less party members alive? Probably much better. This used to be far worse; ACCRETION was a command instead so it only worked in a single battle. With the changes, you can at least save it for when you need it.
By visiting Sarda after getting the ROD, he teaches the WARDING CIRCLE world ability. This does a very busted thing: it allows you to set a save point once per dungeon floor. So you can save every time you go up or down stairs and reload if anything goes awry! Only one can exist in the world at a time; using it again removes the previous one. It might sound nuts, but it has at least one restriction: you can only use TENTs, not CABINs or HOUSEs. So no magic recharges for magic classes in the middle of the dungeon (with this spell, at least - SET TELEPOINT on Time Wizard is like this to an extreme), you still have to ration them out carefully. Still, it doesn't change how absurd this is, especially for variants. Instead of redoing a whole dungeon if something goes wrong, you can just go back to wherever you dropped the circle. You can ignore bad encounters and reload, get as many tries as you want at bosses, and so on.
It's otherwise very much a magical class. A high level Green Wizard has some interesting spells. The L7 spell ALERT stands out as one that prevents fatigue. Obviously only useful with a party member that has fatigue, but still. Their LIMIT is niche: BARRIER provides immunity to 'most' status ailments. Ribbons and WALL will usually do this on their own via elemental resistances, but there's an optional Spellblade fight that ignores these and not this.
Overall thoughts:
The utility of WARDING CIRCLE can turn the game upside down. Other than that, this class is defined by its buff spells, since its commands are questionable. They may not always get a chance to come into play given the nature of FF1, but they're there. They're more useful when you don't yet have Ribbons or aren't using them for whatever variant reason. Of course, White Mage can also get a fair amount of the buff spells too, and some of Green Mage's personal ones suffer from being niche or single target. REGEN alone more than makes up for it, just keep in mind that they cannot revive. They get better once you get spellcasting items.
Personal thoughts:
The changes in 2.0 did a lot for Green Mage. Even before that, WARDING CIRCLE alone made sure it wasn't the worst job in my eyes. Green Mage is great in just about any variant that lets you save or just in simple casuals. Otherwise or if self-imposing restrictions, I would yet again compare this job to White Mage. They don't use their spells in every battle either, and even though White Mages use their spells much more, put spellcasting items on them in the midgame and they'll both do just fine for themselves. It made for an effective tank in my four mages party thanks to RUSE and their high HP, and doing a solo proved that this wasn't just a gimmick: it has real merit.
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Bard/Troubadour
Pre-Class Change:
One of two classes added in 1.3, songs are the cornerstone of the Bard class, which they learn by talking to NPCs throughout the world to gain the inspiration to write them. While playing them, the Bard gives a boost of some sort to all other allies. They're small but effective buffs. Only four songs may be active at one time no matter how many Bards are in the party; subsequent ones will replace them starting with the oldest. Furthermore, each Bard can only play one instance of a song, although multiple can play the same song and stack the effects of it together. If they do anything but SUSTAIN or HIDE, the Bard will stop playing all the songs they are playing. This will also happen if the Bard is inflicted with paralysis, sleep, etc. The one exception is if they are forced to unhide when solo; in which case their song will be sustained. This was a bug kept in by design since it only helps solos. Their one spell charge refreshes outside of combat or if HIDE is used. Since a Bard can unhide and take another action in the same turn, there are few reasons not to consider using HIDE; like maybe wanting the Bard to be a valid target.
So they have special magic they can spam every single battle. They already make a strong case for themselves. They add onto it with a natural resistance to silence, for all the time it's useful. Bards are frail and can only equip light armor. They have a unique weapon type in harps, which never miss and hit all enemies. And as of 2.0, they also ignore defense. The Crystal Harp in the Ice Cave is notable for having a 50% crit chance. In earlier versions, I preferred using knives up through the midgame because the chip damage they added was more consistent; they get some good new ones. They can also use scarves. These are functionally shields with poor absorb, but sport other boosts like to hit% or crit%.
Post-Class Change:
Two special utility harps can be obtained post class-change for the Troubadour by talking to Sara and the Elf Prince. These respectively cast a random song the user knows and cast LULLABY (sleep attempt on all enemies) at the start of a battle/after an ambush turn. The latter is pretty crummy: enemies will likely wake up right away, and if they get hit awake? They'll attack that turn anyway! The former is unreliable, but you can at least manipulate it by holding off on some songs. Honorable mention goes to the Gilbart Harp, which can only be obtained by having a Thief and SEARCHing north while on the throne at Ordeals' entrance. It autocasts VICTORY MARCH, the L8 song that doubles EXP yield from a battle.
These new pieces of equipment aside, they now get two spell charges and can thus stack songs more effectively. They still can't stack the same song on their own. That is, without their LIMIT, VIRTUOSO. This lets them cast any song without using a spell charge and allows the same one to be cast multiple times for the rest of the battle, subject to the four at a time rule. There are certainly some worth using more than once, like the critical hit and magic boosting songs.
Overall thoughts:
A solid if not strong support class. The songs are all good, and you never have to worry about running out of spell charges with them. But the Bard can't do much on its own because its stats are pitiful. This means it's up to the rest of the party to kill the enemies. Is it worth spending a slot on a strict support character? Well, White Mage already existed in vanilla, which are also essentially strict support and can't do it every single battle. You could make a case for including them, and you can for Bards as well. They're at their best in parties that focus on pure physical or pure magic since you only need to cast one set of songs. The critical song in particular is very welcome with the critical hit bug being fixed.
Personal thoughts:
It was weird playing this class. It was like having a White Mage with a Black Mage's chip physical offense. But the songs held up enough that I didn't even want to use Zeus, etc. with it. That's a plus: anything that can break from FIGHT/ITEMS spam is good in my books. I especially appreciated that all eight songs were good: I found use for all of them throughout the game. None of them were too niche, too powerful, or ever stopped being relevant; it was only ANGELSONG (5% HP recovery after taking a turn) that took a while to be useful.
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Dark Knight/Deathknight
Pre-Class Change:
The other class new to 1.3. Dark Knight is an attempt at making a gimmick class partially marred by the design of FF1. They are physical attackers who only wield Greatswords. These weapons are 2-handed, so they can't use shields (not even the ProCape).
The problem with these weapons is that despite the class' 5 base hit% and gaining 3 per level, most impose a big hit% penalty in exchange for raw damage numbers. One big hit isn't really a thing that works in FF1: it's number of hits that gives you the big spikes in your damage output. They are absolutely going to miss a lot in the early game. Luckily, once you get to Melmond you can buy the Bastard Sword for 2500G: 25 power and +10% hit. Not much hit% compared to, say, the Ice Sword, but that's still very solid. Bastard is a weapon you can use until the very end of the game, and it's sometimes even worth using over the endgame ones because just it can beat them on hits; however, the others' power and critical chance will eventually overtake it anyway. The overall best might be the Cobalt bought in Crescent Lake: 47 power and only -10% hit. As a contrast, the 'strongest' Buster Sword has 60 power and -30% hit. If you want to spare the inventory space, you can keep weapons and swap them periodically to give the Dark Knight as much power and hits as possible. They may well be the best Masmune users just because its hit% is over 40 points higher than anything else the class can use. They especially appreciate being paired with anyone who can FAST them.
The class can use some Black Magic, a select two spells for each level with a focus on debuffs. Its exclusive spells are unimpressive for the most part, and the status-based vanilla ones it gets may not be too appealing depending on one's playstyle. It also has a command ability, BLOOD WEAPON. After using it, the next two attacks will heal the Dark Knight for half the damage they inflicted (or 100% with the Crimson Greatsword equipped). I feel it's generally not worth it: you're trading a turn of damage for just two of healing (which are subject to variance). However, if you're doing a solo challenge or possibly others, this is worth its weight in gold.
Dark Knight specializes in the darkness status. They have a natural resistance to it and if it's inflicted on an enemy, their SHADOWBIND makes their hit% will rise by at least 32% - good for one extra hit as long as their hit% is positive. They pair well with anyone who can inflict it en masse like Blue Mage or anyone who can cast DARK (including themselves) - though the action economy needs to line up for it to be worth it over just attacking from the drop.
One final note: their growths are horrendous. Seriously, look at them. Because of their low AGI and LUCK, you're likely to be ambushed a lot if you put this class in your first slot. They combo nicely with Ninjas for this reason, as they can prevent them while they're the displayed character (and can also retrieve a unique greatsword in the starting room of ToFR which can be used for a secret achievement).
Post-Class Change:
Deathknights gain access to the SOULEATER command in battle, hitting all non-undead enemies for damage proportional to the class's maxHP and with a high chance to inflict darkness, while damaging the Deathknight for 20% of their max HP. Undead get healed by it, but can still be hit by the status. I was reluctant to use this sometimes due to worries about running out of HEALs mid-dungeon, but it does hit hard and has synergy with not only SHADOWBIND and BLOOD WEAPON, but with their hidden skill. By completing a sidequest from a man in Onrac asking your Deathknight(s) to take 1000 damage in a single battle - SOULEATER recoil doesn't count - without dying (or at least one survivor among them), they can earn the MISERY trait. This increases their damage as their HP lowers. This is cool on paper and encourages a high-risk high-reward style not seen on anything in vanilla. But it's best with a White Mage, Red Mage, high-level Evoker, or even a Time Mage, so you can revive them when an accident inevitably happens.
Then there's CONSUME BAT. This world ability allows them to eat any bat NPC for stats. The bats on any particular map will all boost the same stats: for example the Northwest Castle's bats all boost LUCK, Earth Cave B3 and B5 all boost STR, and eating the Sky Warriors in the Temple of Fiends boosts HP. I thought this threw off the game balance, and it sort of does, not to mention the hassle of hunting them all down through encounter infested dungeons; FFR has a REPEL item to prevent these, but it's exclusive to NG+ (where you can just eat the bats as you see them). They will get +23 STR, +15 AGI, +14 INT, +23 VIT, +24 LUCK, and five strong HP growths (which will be equal to VIT÷4 plus 20-25) out of it. That's not too shabby. Yet this is in truth just a way to paper over their awful fixed stat growths. Worse, only the visible Deathknight will get the bonus: no sharing if you run multiple.
I never found a good place to use their LIMIT, DREADSPIKES. This drains HP from would-be physical attackers who target the Deathknight, wearing off once 50% of their max HP has been absorbed in this fashion. Like, maybe against KRAKEN? It has some use in solos where they're the only target, or if you use DECOY on them.
Overall thoughts:
By design or happenstance, Dark Knight is an investment class like the Black Belt. They'll sag behind all other physical attackers until you can reach Melmond, after which they start to take off. They make excellent tanks due to their solid HP and ability to wear heavy armor - just keep in mind their bad AGI/LUCK makes them poor leaders due to inviting ambushes. Haven't yet run a party condusive to abusing MISERY, but I'd be interested in seeing how they do when they safely can. The darkness hit boost gimmick is awkward, but at least it gets a reliable option of inflicting it after class change. Still, I feel that this is a contender for the worst job. Other physical attackers don't need as much babying to kill things.
Personal thoughts:
Despite this job being poor in terms of performance, it grew on me as the game went on. It's gimmicky, but it's interesting. Greatswords in particular are a cool concept, even if it takes forever for them to be worth it. It proved to be one of the more fun solo challenges I've done. I'm tempted to try a single class challenge (not solo) with them to really lean into the darkness abuse. It has anti-synergy with itself though, which is a shame.
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Spellblade/Rune Knight
Pre-Class Change:
Spellblade is one of the classes introduced in the 2.1 version update. It's a physically-oriented class that can use some heavier armor and even heavy shields! Can you believe they're the first FFR class that can use the latter? Note that their armor draw isn't as expansive before class change, and their low HP - they're comparable to Evoker - can make them a liability to put up front. Mercifully, they wield swords rather than the greatswords they use in FF11 (a favorite of Ozmo's).
They purchase their EN-spells from White Magic shops. These apply an element to an ally of your choice for the rest of the battle. It will stack with any other elements on the weapon. If it wasn't for changes to the formula in 2.1 (it was previously 4-8 extra damage before defense, now it's after) and their BLADECRAFT trait, this would be bad. The trait causes them to receive a +50% boost to base damage if their weapon is imbued with an element or a +100% boost if hitting a weakness (including racial). This makes it so they don't actually lose any damage when hitting a weakness, just turns. It even works passively with elemental swords! All this keeps them competitive with other heavy hitters. They can also use the IMPART combat ability to bestow this to all allies. This seems to behave abnormally as of now; for example, they can kill SCUMs in the Marsh Cave with an elemental weapon even if it's not hitting a weakness.
By taking a Spellblade along, you can meet a certain warrior wandering the land looking for a legendary sword. He'll be happy to pass off elemental swords he found to you or rant about others. Other classes can use these too, not just the Spellblade. This lets them take advantage of BLADECRAFT early on and provides a few extra free weapons.
Post-Class Change:
The Rune Knight gains access to the RUNIC command. This will allow them to absorb up to three white or black spells in one turn, whether an ally or an enemy cast it or what that enemy is. Want to deny CHAOS his CUR4? Yeah, it works just fine on that. It also affects player blue magic, but not enemy versions. Summons and geomancy also go through it. With one charge, they can use FIGHT+ to attack all enemies for +30% damage. Additional charges will add +30% more each. If they reach max of three charges, MAGIC+ can be used instead to apply their EN spells to all allies. It's neat, but requires a lot of setup turns that might be better spent attacking. Something important to note is that it will not stop spells when fully charged, so you'll have to release the energy from time to time.
Besides an updated equipment selection - which oddly excludes Defense Sword but does include all heavy armor (including Opal), Aegis Shield, and Xcalber! - they can learn tier 2 EN spells. However, this is done in a unique way. They have to kill a certain number of enemies with the matching EN spell to learn its upgraded version. These provide additional effects on top of the elemental infusion.
After obtaining Xcalber, you can fight the wandering swordsman on Coneria's bridge. This fight is bizarre and boils down to either surviving for several turns, beating him through his damage and status (Green Mage can help with both), or just DEMI and GEOSTORMing him into oblivion. This unlocks the BLITZ command, which triggers a FIGHT against a random enemy after using an EN spell, inflicting tiredness after. It fixes the action economy, but it also comes very late and after a very annoying fight. Note that you can still get this without promotion!
Their LIMIT is INFUSE, instantly adding three RUNIC charges right away. It's okay, especially if you don't have a party that can or are up against enemies who can't empower RUNIC.
Overall thoughts:
Spellblade was always going to be a hard sell in FFR. The design of the class is simply at odds with the design of FF1. BLITZ would have be a great way to fix this, but it comes very late. Thanks to BLADECRAFT though, they manage to be passable on offense anyway. The juxtaposition of high absorb with low HP is interesting. Practically though, since most of the big damaging threats are magical or hit so hard that armor barely matters, they can feel like glass cannons anyway. This doesn't make them bad though, just different.
Personal thoughts:
This one surprised me. I actually was expecting the worst with this class, but Ozmo worked hard to make it not completely terrible to play. Glad to see another knight armor wearer, they managed to keep up with Paladin's swording for the most part, and the support options were cool. It was all right to play and had a unique identity. Though that superboss fight was a frustrating exercise in luck even when aiming to outlast it.
Also trivia: they couldn't use the Masmune in 2.1 wtf that was just wrong. And a bug, thankfully.
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Archer/Ranger
Pre-Class Change:
The Archer class was introduced in 2.1. They come with the DETECT TRAPs trait, a cute little thing that highlights spiked tiles (fixed encounters). They are one of three classes that can use scarves, and can surprisingly wear the ProCape as well in contrast to other two-handed attackers. They have unusually high HP growth (gaining a strong boost roughly every other level) and the same hit% as Warrior/Lancer that is sadly mostly wasted on them.
As you might expect, bows were introduced as a new weapon type for them. These work weird: they generally have low damage, high critical hit rates, and can't do more than one hit without FAST no matter how much hit% they have. This uh, this is bad. In attempt to make up for this, they have their BOW PROFICIENCY trait. Preliminary testing seems to indicate that half their hit% gets added as flat damage - further halved if they are inflicted with SLOW. It's not really enough. For example, around the Marsh Cave, most other proper physical attackers can expect to do around 100 damage on a good 2-hits. Archer will still be doing like 30-40. Even when they get better bows, they'll still be a step behind most other classes. They generally have to rely on crits and hope they don't miss.
Archers can use knives instead, but the damage comes out to around the same, and the game pushes them towards bows anyway: they can't use most of their commands without them. AIM is one: it can be used to increase the power of the next FIGHT attack. It can be stacked up to three times, dealing 120% extra damage for each charge to a maximum of 360% (effectively 4.6× damage). Is it worth it? Well, it can be good for helping them secure kills in slower battles. And it technically deals more than two FIGHTs, but is still generally only worth it against bosses. And there's a better option.
When the Archer defeats an enemy with a melee attack, their HUNTER trait grants materials that vary by family. ARROWCRAFT lets them craft special arrows from the magic menu to use in battle. All of these have a flat chance to inflict a debuff, all are considered physical attacks despite being used from MAGIC (they can even crit!), and most deal double damage to specific families of enemies. Two of the right ones will outdamage AIM, and the status ailments can be crippling. You can hold up to 12 of each arrow at once; if you have multiple Archers, they have to share. While great, it should be noted that these are consumable. In other words, the Archer will have to be fed kills to gain materials to use this regularly. It's a hassle and a grind...
Post-Class Change:
...until promotion, when they the SCAVENGE world ability. They can use this at will to potentially find nothing, find a material from a monster in the area, or trigger an encounter. It helps immensely with finding the rarer materials like GEL. Still a grind, but less of one. If used after stepping on a spiked tile, they will have a 100% chance of getting something that the monsters give, though only the first time. This can be used on the peninsula near Gaia to find their ultimate weapon; the Yoichi Bow. It has a 50% crit rate, which helps them a lot.
Then there's the HUNTER'S MARK command. This is absolutely disgusting. It triggers at the start of a round, and the next time the targeted monster is physically attacked? It forces all hits to be critical! This is like having the Master's LIMIT available on-demand, and is fantastic as long as you have at least one other physical attacker. Kind of sucks otherwise; the Ranger can take advantage, but the action economy sucks in that case. At least you don't need a bow for this one. It does not inflict tiredness either, so this is highly spammable.
Their LIMIT is RAPID-FIRE. Requiring a bow to use, it deals 4 physical hits at full power with max damage variance to random targets, ignoring defense and evasion. It is still subject to missing. It's also unaffected by Slow. It's okay.
Overall thoughts:
The gimmick of attacking only once doesn't really work in FF1. It's sort of like a worse version of what the Dark Knight suffers from, because at least they can eventually get multiple hits and hit way harder. Archers are limited to that through FAST, which is thankfully by design. Their low damage output makes it that much harder to create their magic arrows, the true strength of their class. It's sluggish at best and endangers your squishier party members at worst, the other example of an FFR class that has anti-synergy with others. Even after promotion and gaining the Yoichi Bow, HUNTER'S MARK was so ridiculous that I simply had them spamming that in boss fights rather than futzing around with their own unreliable damage. It saves them from being at the bottom of the barrel.
Personal thoughts:
All that hassle made it so that I didn't really end up using magic arrows a lot. Even when I used them, it was for the status; the damage was underwhelming. At least I got a steady stream of them from having a mostly physical party, it'd have been way worse with more AoE. I can see this gimmick being fun in a solo or single class challenge. HUNTER'S MARK also really needs tiredness, it's just too overpowered. I'm really not sure how to feel about this one overall. They just sucked on offense, the arrow support was fine if derivative, and murder enabling was too good to where the job didn't get a chance to shine on its own merits. I'm leaning towards apathy here, if not, weakly disliking it.
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Index
