If I got trauma'd into this thing 1-shotting someone every turn while trying to play fair and normally then yea I'm fine just turning off every way for you to do damage with cheese idc. It's not like the boss had any interesting gimmicks in the first place.

For the postgame boss I did end up going with the boring spam jams and ult strategy, but I also went a step further to use the ults of Richard (offense & defense buffs to all party members), Phenn (reduce damage taken for the team), and Carinda (sidestep for the next few attacks) to take NO damage.

I will forever cherish my "give Ophilia a gun" strategy for Galdera in 1 because that was by far the smoothest (and most hilarious) run of the boss I've ever done, but my strategy for 0's boss might rival it if it works ngl......

If I made this many unhinged posts about the game then that's a pretty clear mark I really enjoyed it. Still hard to recommend it tho because it is a prequel to 1, so I'd urge anyone to go through 1 first since it does enhance the story a lot imo.

-H'aanit for being cool despite her haters saying she talks funny idc underrated queen
-Alexia for carrying me throughout most of the game (got replaced by Xerc at the end, ty to Xerc as well)
-Pius for being in my party for the entire game lmao
-Heidne for being that bad bitch

I still prefer the actual gameplay flow of Octo 1 and 2 with only 8 total party members and using 4 per fight, but being able to have a large cast and choose your goobers was cute. Shoutouts to:
-Goodwin for being hilarious
-Alfyn for doing big damage crimes once again
-Ludo for giving me money

Final boss was kinda messy and not much of a challenge but it's hype so idc. ROSSO COMING IN, RIPPING HIS SHIRT OFF, AND GETTING THE KILLING BLOW ON ONE OF THE APPENDAGES HAD ME CHEERING SO LOUD.
Also funny how even my Xbox was struggling to handle everything going on in the fight, rip Switch 1's.

THEORETICALLY Cyrus is the better Scholar over Xerc (3 elements instead of 2) but I can boost the light & dark damage hits on Xerc's latent power so he does more damage. Plus I wanna use the new characters and know them a bit over reusing 1's cast (ignore Alfyn and H'aanit permanently on my team)

Also finally benched Alexia today for Xerc. I was distracted by her silly big damage numbers for too long to realize 50,000 damage is less than 10,000×6 damage...
(Same with H'aanit "feeling" weaker when using her latent power bc she's about 16,000×3, but nah that's almost the same)

*character in the background having an emotional breakdown over having to fight a friend/family member/other assorted loved one*

me breaking down to h'aanit failing to contribute anything to the current situation:

AT Uth Duna has the gen 1 jank hitboxes.
AT Jin Dahaad has zoomies when he definitely should not have zoomies.
AT Nu Udra is annoying but tbh I'm just really bad at Nu Udra so I'm willing to give him a chance and say this one's on me.
AT Rey Dau is cool c:

Most AT's have been flops so far ngl.