War of mathematics

Day 385

This is an important week for me because it may well determine whether or not I keep my job. Whatever the outcome, I expect I'll be highly relieved once it's all over. Granted, getting a new job at this point is inevitably going to be a stressful experience, but the anticipation is what's killing me more than anything else. I really hope I do well and meet my quota, but if not, I'm going to try my best not  to get too down on myself. I have the skillset required to land myself another job--and I shouldn't give in to apathy and depression as I have in the past. It's highly unproductive!

The vast majority of my free time lately has of course been spent on Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions. I'm in a stage of the game where I feel compelled to endlessly grind. It's not a matter of game difficulty by any means because I've found the game to be mostly straightforward so far--a testament to my experience with the game. I'm becoming impatient to form my ideal party composition so I'm hanging around and unlocking some of the classes I'm going to need. I think I might be overdoing it a bit, though. It would probably serve me better just to move on and level up through the storyline.

I'm planning on spending a great deal of time on War of the Lions because I'd like to unlock all of the new classes as well as experiment with any endgame content it might have to offer. I was vaguely aware of bonus dungeons available in the original version of the game but I'd never bothered with them all that much because I found playing through the main game to be significantly more compelling. By the time I reach that part of the game, I may well resume that way of thinking, but it's hard to say at this point.

One class I've taken great pains to unlock is the Arithmetician, a bizarre job that uses math to target opponents (and allies) with magic. This class has access to all of the major magic spells your character has learned (although not Geomancy or Summoning spells) and is capable of casting them on multiple targets based on mathematical criteria. For instance, you might cast a Fire spell on all targets at a height divisible by 5. All targets on heights 5, 10, 15, and so on will be afflicted by this Fire spell. With the proper preparation, it is possible to target a huge variety of opponents with very powerful spells.

Unlocking all the various abilities for this class can be an exercise in frustration, but considering the ridiculous power level, that's probably fair. The Arithmetician has a base speed of 3, less than half the average of other classes. This makes it almost impossible to function in combat without abusing Haste and the spell Tailwind, which boosts speed and can be repeated as many times as necessary. It doesn't seem all that viable to actually use the Arithmetician class in real story missions, but Arithmeticks is a fantastic secondary command for any spellcasting class.