Quellist said:
Can someone tell me what i'm doing wrong with this game while we're at it? I'm no newbie to strategy games and i was hoping this was going to be like Tactics Ogre. I only get a few battles in and the enemies are higher level and hideously punishing already. I tried grinding but then the enemies were higher level and had more abilities so punished me more and i can't learn enough JP to put my abilities up without boosting my levels and thus boosting the enemies levels. What's the trick here?
Random battle enemies are randomly generated, but use the highest level of any of your characters in the battle as their benchmark. To avoid facing overleveled enemies, you have to maintain battle party experience level consistency. This is a problem that will diminish as you level-up; there's a much bigger difference between levels 2 and 3 than levels 19 and 20.
Be mindful that just like in Tactics Ogre, different maps will produce monsters of differing base power levels. Goblins will always be less dangerous than Behemoths, but you gain identical xp/jp for striking them.
As for those hideously powerful enemies in scripted battles, I suspect you're talking about the notorious difficulty spike in Dorter Trade City. Leveling up will actually help you here, as scripted enemies have fixed xp levels.
The best early game way to earn JP is to learn the squire support ability which boosts it's gain, "Gained JP Up" or "JP Boost" depending on your game version.
If you're trying to grind, whittle the enemy party down to one character, then have your people throw rocks at each other. Be mindful that grinding by rock throwing isn't always a great idea, particularly in the early game; you'll level up without making money!
If you prefer to quit to title rather than accepting permadeath, it can make a lot of sense to dismiss two of the starting characters. You can only ever fit 5 people in your party, the only reason for any additional red shirts is if you want one of every class, and are willing to grind them all.
Stores will sometimes update their inventory during a chain of scripted battles, rather than at it's end. It can occasionally be worthwhile to go back to a town, instead of proceeding to the next fight. I recommend going back between scripted battles whenever possible, it'll give you best access to store inventory, and the random encounters during travel will organically spread the grinding out between story fights.
Be mindful that this game has gender differentiation. Females have significantly greater magic attack power, while males have physical attack power. The only reason to buck that trend is to produce Bards and Dancers, which require a male to have mage levels and a female to have warrior levels before unlocking.
Whew, wall of text. Your fault for asking!