States (Day 213)

One thing I'm not a huge fan of in 4 Heroes of Light is the fact that you spend so much time without access to your entire party. I'm pretty far into the game and I've been split up countless times. You generally only have access to one or two party members at a time with a guest party member filling in that previews a future job. This works in theory, but in practice it's mostly just frustrating--because your guest character has a static job and it really messed with the strategy I want to focus on. I don't feel like I should have to wait this long into the game to actually experiment with party compositions, especially now that I have about half the jobs unlocked.

There are quite a few things about the game that I admire but it is positively riddled with other frustrations. To unlock one of the job classes, you have to participate in a math minigame. This minigame has absolutely no relevancy to the area in which it is found nor the job that it unlocks. If it unlocked the Calculator class (ala Final Fantasy Tactics) it would be wholly appropriate--but no, it unlocks the Beastmaster. That makes no sense. And yes, I looked up an application that computes the problems for me and it still took me a few tries to get a high enough score.

On the other hand, the class itself is pretty interesting. There's a plot point in the game where a party member gets turned into a cat--which leads you into acquiring the Transform Staff. This staff can transform you into an animal and back again, which is actually relevant not only to the Beastmaster class but various NPCs scattered around the world. There are a lot of animals you can speak to while in animal form, including a fox companion you might find at every save point who gives you hints on how to progress. This is a welcome feature when it's seldom obvious what you're to do next.

Under normal circumstances, stats are penalized to 70% of their original values while in animal form, but if there is a beastmaster in your party, those stats are doubled to 140%--meaning that your stats get a 40% bonus from standard human form. This seems pretty significant and I'd definitely like to experiment with this further. Beastmasters can also capture weakened enemies and release them as an attack, much like the Mediator class from Final Fantasy V.