Final Fantasy Tactics A2/YMMV


 * Anticlimax Boss:
 * The Neukhia in the second part of "A request". It deals even less damage than the proceeding boss (who is to be fair, That One Boss). Even though it sets it's self up as a puzzle boss (you have to hit 4 switchs around the map to damage it) it's really pretty easy to steal his flunkies' Genji armlets and pound it into the ground without using the weapon.
 * Unless you made it through the previous boss without grinding and the Neukhia ends up healing itself more quickly than you can hurt it.
 * The Final Watch at the top of the third Brightmoon Tor. After facing off against wave after wave of brutal foes that can easily massacre unprepared parties many times over, your final foe is... an ordinary Crushatrice with only two Blackwind guards. The former does have more health than anything else in the game, but not a single Turning ability, meaning it should barely scratch you compared to the preceding fights.
 * Game Breaker: And how. Where to even begin?
 * Ranger + Item Lore (which doubles the effectiveness of potions) + Mirror Items (which lets you use items for the opposite effect) + Hi-Potion/X-Potion = 200/400 damage, with the same accuracy as a normal physical attack. In a game where most of the enemies have less than 400 HP. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Also, lucking out in getting the materials for a powerful ability early (or abusing the Auction House once your clan takes over the entire region, or getting lucky with the trade function) can cause this.
 * In addition, while other Game Breaker(s) from the first game were removed, it's still possible to put enemies to sleep (or better yet, Stop) to increase the hit chance of all effects to 100%. Including instant-kill abilities that normally have around 30%.
 * Parivir a.k.a. Yojimbou. Remember how much of a Game Breaker Dual-Wielding was in the first game? It's outdated. The Parivir (equipped with the passive skill "Geomancy") can simply walk up to something and hit it for double damage, for free, without having had to grind 999 AP. And he has multiple skills to do it with, each carrying a different element and different ailments.
 * And due to the mentioned Geomancy, also strike enemies neutral to specific elements as if they were weak to the element used. Which is almost all enemies.
 * For an idea on this, follow the calcs: the Parivir's Blade attacks do twice normal damage for no MP (while the Paladin's Holy Blade costs 22 MP for the same effect), Geomancy automatically makes enemies weak to all elements, and weaknesses mean you take 150% damage. All combined, these skills do THREE times the usual damage for the already extremely powerful Parivir, and cause status. Game Breaker indeed.
 * Also, there exists the Hume Illusionist/Seer combo. Magick Frenzy, surprisingly, works with Illusion spells. Meaning that the unit can stand in one spot, hit all enemies with the Illusion spell, then smack all the enemies upside the head with his equipped weapon (even more so if he's using dual wield, although you'll have to compensate Half MP for dual wield). To prevent total abuse like the Bulwark combo above, while Nu Mou can also be Illusionists, only Humes can use the Seer job.
 * Elemental Rend MP. Arming a Dragoon (or Templar) with Arts of War and an elemental Lance lets him "Reverse" Rend MP two mages wearing the appropriate absorbing robes for massive amounts of mana. THIS is how you spam Geomancy-powered Illusions.
 * The MP system of this game means that the Blue Magick "Matra Magick" (which switches MP and HP values) can reduce an enemy with several hundred hit points to death if used early enough in the battle. Used with the Reverse Rend MP trick (or a White Chocobo Rider's Choco Recharge) this can make situations that pit the player against one or two extremely powerful enemies much easier.
 * Though it may not be on the same level as the other combos, the Viera Summoner/Red Mage deserves a mention. Combine Summons (powerful wide area magick), Red Magic (for Doublecast) and the support ability "Blood Price" (Cast From HP), and you've got a caster that can quickly tear enemies to shreds or heal, buff, and revive all of your units at once right off the bat. That the Summoner job offers the best Magick stat growth among Viera jobs is just icing on the cake. It does take a while to set this combo up though.
 * For giggles, give her the Chameleon Robe (Absorb Holy). As long as she's in range, the Summoner can spam Doublecasted Maduin (extremely high Holy damage) for free in a wide area. Extremely overpowered.
 * Forget Doublecast. Assassin + Seventh Heaven (Bow) + Summoning Magic + Blood Price = Swiss Army Knife character. Need to kill someone? Ultima Shot them from afar! Need to heal yourself and your entire dead party? Cast Phoenix for essentially no charge! Once you have the setup, those two moves get you through the entire game.
 * As noted above, the Ultima skills, with a 32 mp cost, usually fall under Awesome but Impractical. However, the support ability "Halve MP" (available to Bangaa, Hume, and Viera) + the MP Channeling (double MP regen) Clan Privilege + any job that uses ranged weapons = deal 300-500 points of damage every turn at any distance. Like the Double Casting Blood Price Summoner above, this takes a long time to set up, since the Ultima skills have a 990 AP cost and Halve MP has a 400 AP cost.
 * The best class for this is the Bangaa's Trickster: now that Ultima is a VERY powerful magic-based attack (instead of being based on attack damage), the Trickster, which has Nu Mou-like Magic Power, Ninja Speed, and Cards which have extremely high range, as well as access to Halve MP, you can spam Ultima Sword EVERY turn (as long as you also have MP Channeling active), one-shotting pretty much every enemy, before they can even move, from halfway across the stage.
 * Another good option here is to equip your resident Sage with two Reverie shields, the Azure Tear, Red shoes and Ninja gear. This puts his evasion up to 70%. Combine this with the aforementioned method of using ultima every turn and you've got a supposedly spell-oriented class, on a Nu Mou no less, running around the field, dodging the vast majority of attacks, and PUNCHING ENEMIES IN THE FACE FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE since ultima uses your weapon animation and you don't have a weapon equipped. And this is just the primary job, you can stick white magic on the secondary and you've got an unkillable ultima machine. Of course, this isn't remotely feasible until incredibly late in the game because the Azure Tear can't be obtained until the third ascent of Brightmoon Tor, and without it, you can only reach 50% evasion. Which is still pretty good.
 * One of the subtly strongest moves in the game is Smile Toss, a skill of the Moogle Juggler. It does the exact same thing as the Time Magic "Quicken", except it does not cost any mana to use. A hasted Juggler (which has excellent speed growth) using his turns to Smile-Toss his slower but more powerful teammates can completely subvert the usual turn order of the battle, allowing you to control the tempo of battle by having your powerhouses take many more turns than they normally would. Having two Moogles smiletossing each other will let you fill their mana up as much as you want and position them wherever you like on the battlefield, allowing you to even beat certain missions before the enemy even gets a turn.
 * You mean like this?
 * Goddamned Bats:
 * Dreamhares and their cousins Hoppy Bunnies exist to turn moderately challenging situations into teeth-grinding nuisances. They are extremely fast, difficult to hit and love spamming haste on their allies, or slow on your party. Dreamhares also have a highly effective charm spell to top it off.
 * Malboros also appear in several varieties, including a type that can Charm half your team without fail, whilst being immune to all status effects itself.
 * Also, anything able to attack you at extremely long range (looking at YOU, enemy Fusiliers/Cannoneers/Tricksters)
 * Facing large numbers of Fairies in small battle fields will result in "Slow" purgatory, even if you are 10 times their level.
 * The "Shelling" family of monsters can be infuriating: most of these turtles love to immobilize with Headbutts; Adamantitans can eat your gear with their Munch ability, including difficult-to-replace pieces; and Toughskins delight in spamming Resonate, a skill that inflicts the Disable debuff on anyone carrying a bladed weapon. Prepare to watch your powerful Spellblade or Parivir stand there like a dope for the entire battle.
 * Scrappy Level: The "An Earnest..." missions, which require you to find up to four dates for a chronically overscheduled petitioner. Amazingly, the lucky ladies care more about level, MVP trophies and other unspecified attributes than little things like gender and species.
 * Even worse with these missions is the fact that "An Earnest Delight" (the last of them) is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to complete without dispatching, so if you are mainly using story characters then my friend you are FUCKED.
 * Once the player has completed all 300 missions, one final tournament becomes available. The first two fights are challenging. The third one consists of a pair of Tonberries, some enemies to cast haste on the Tonberries, and about four rounds of free turns for the enemies.
 * The "Cleaning" missions are a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes, the time limit is as little as two rounds or as long as four rounds. Sometimes there aren't any enemies to bother you. Sometimes there are a bunch of Mimics that spam lightning magic, or fast Dreamhares that use their Dance moves to Haste up and raise their attack, and also spam status spells on you. The times when you get two rounds to clean a Mimic/Dreamhare infested ship are loads of fun.
 * The "Time to Act" mission, which combines this with That One Boss. How Scrappy the mission is mostly depends on the Tinker. If the Tinker skills go your way, the mission isn't so bad. If it ends up casting Haste on the enemies, you might as well turn off the DS and try again.
 * Also a Guide Dang It, as it's never made explicit that the repeatable prerequisite mission to Time To Act increases the capabilities of the ally moogles in Time To Act.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: Laws, again.
 * Specifically certain laws that you may end up violating by an unavoidable accident. Namely "no damage above X, no hitting enemies more than 1 square away, or no critical hits" which you will end up breaking if you accidentally score a Critical Hit because you'll deal more damage than you expected to, will knock the opponent away counting the attack as damaging multiple squares away, or break the law for the Critical itself. Or the No Knockbacks law.
 * That One Attack: Illua's Dimensional Rift. This special attack reduces everyone's current health points in the area of effect by 75%. Said area of effect is a 3x3 diamond, identical to a summon. Add to this the fact that she can boost her Accuracy with her Saber ability and that she can cast that attack from afar, and you have there an unavoidable ability able to cripple your entire team.
 * That One Boss:
 * Lord of the Flowsand has a nasty habit of tripping players up, given how early it appears in the storyline. It has about 5 times the HP your characters do, capable of dealing high damage, has an attack that drains HP to heal itself, and to top it all off, it regenerates a percentage of any damage you deal to it.
 * The first fight against isn't a picnic either if you haven't spent time doing sidequests. While you only have to defeat the Mark,  allies are hardly pushovers, and  uses unique and devastating magic that can quickly tear about your forces. How badly? Try 75% of all units' HP in 3x3 diamond.  also boasts high hp and the "Reflex" R-ability that allows  to avoid most physical attacks. Oh, and  also seals the Judge, meaning no clan privileges and no bringing KO'ed units back. Finally,.
 * Woolseyism: The Yojimbo class, meaning a samurai/ronin hired to be a bodyguard, is changed to Parivir, Sanskrit for bodyguard. The change is of questionable quality as the Parivir is a samurai class. To be fair, Yojimbo also means bodyguard.