1. Choose a Ranged Character as Your Main Character in Battle
At the beginning of the game, controlling someone like Victor or Fidel is decent since they do the most direct damage. But as the game progresses and boss battles become longer and more grueling, you'll want to switch control to a ranged character as a default. Not only does the camera remain more stable, not wobbling every which way when you're locked as a melee character, but you generally get to see more of the battlefield and ranged characters, be it Emmerson, Miki, or Fiore, have the best crowd control abilities in the game.
Emmerson in particular has the Crescent Wings ability, a horizontal wave that hits every enemy in a straight line multiple times. And for longer boss battles, it's best to control Miki for healing and Fiore every once in a while to fire off Extinction spells from a safe distance.
2. Sidestep, Sidestep, Sidestep
The game doesn't really emphasize sidestepping enough. It's just a single sentence in the tutorial page about guarding. While you likely won't need to dodge at all in a typical fight, boss fights require you to be far more diligent. By guarding with the square button and then pushing the left analog in a direction, your controlled character will hop around the battlefield.
You can evade quick strikes and character-killing attacks easily by sidestepping multiple times in different directions. This becomes important when you're controlling ranged characters (all of whom are rather squishy) and the boss decides to target you out of the blue (since there doesn't seem to be gauge for threat in this game). You might also find your character in a strange, cramped position at the start of battle, so sidestepping around the enemies to find a better angle for attack can be better idea than winding up for an attack immediately at the start of the battle.
3. Use Battle Skills Generously
At the beginning of the game, your party will need to conserve MP given their reserves. But about midway through, the MP bar for all your characters will become rather sizable, to the point that the game expects you to use battle skills almost exclusively. Simple, inexpensive blackberries will give any character 30% of his or her MP back in a single gulp, and there will be healing bubbles planted rather generously throughout the game. So don't be shy when it comes to battle skills.
4. Chain Cancel Bonuses, Start Combos With A Strong Attack
For moments when you're not using combat skills, you'll want to perform a chain of normal attacks. By attacking with a weak attack and then immediately following up with a strong attack, your attack will be given an additional 25% bonus. If you continually switch between normal and strong attacks, you can extend this combo up to four times for a 100% bonus.
Now, the main reason for why you may want to use normal attacks in the first place is for staggering purposes. They might not do a lot of damage, but for most enemies, a hit stuns them for a short while and interrupts whatever attack they were planning to use.
The tutorial at the beginning of the game emphasizes the importance of the roshambo relationship between weak attacks, strong attacks, and guarding. However, what this ultimately boils down to, is starting combos with a strong attack in almost all scenarios. Strong attacks take a bit longer to wind up, but if they go through, they always hit, allowing you to follow up with a chain-cancelled weak attack. On the contrary, it's always a risk starting with a weak attack.
5. Beware of Confined Spaces
If the enemies don't kill you, the battlefield will. The size of the battlefield isn't as important when you're in an open field like the Resulian Plains or the Coast of Minoz, but there will be dungeons later in the game that have thin hallways and tightly squared-off boundaries. Moving past these boundaries triggers an escape; at the same time, it may take a few moments for your character to enter the battlefield proper if you choose to use a ranged character like Emmerson. And within those precious few moments, the enemy has already wound up its attack and is ready to fire on you before you can even react.
Before wandering into the battlefield, it's in your best interest to assess the lineup of enemies and how they are situated first. You may want to wait a few second for the enemies to group together so that your chosen character's AoE attacks have the most effect and so that your group doesn't get caught in a de facto pincer attack. Remember that your party are all grouped up together at the start of any fight, which can leave them vulnerable to the enemy's AoE attacks too. Ready yourself to sidestep as the very first move if you find yourself in a tight spot, literally.
6. Prepare for Controller-Throwing “Protect Anne” Boss Battles
By far the most obnoxious parts of Star Ocean 5 are three points when you'll need to protect Anne, who is busy attempting to hack something, requiring you to save her from all incoming damage and heal her. If Anne's life bar goes down to zero, it's an immediate game over. And no, you can't resurrect her with Raise Dead or some Fresh Sage. It's idiotic, frustrating-as-hell game design, but there they are.
What makes these sequences tough is a combination of reasons: the battlefield is confined to a small space, every enemy that spawns in the area immediately targets her, and there's nothing you can really do to change any of this. I recommend several things to combat these overwhelming disadvantages. First, increase Anne's lifebar however you can whether it's accessories that boost HP or food items that boost HP temporarily. Next, make sure that Miki and Fiore are away from the general fray so that they aren't interrupted and do the best they can to heal and target enemies with crowd-control spells. Anything that sends enemies into the air like Earth Glaive and Tornado or has a wide area of effect is a must.
Of course, healing Anne at every juncture as fast as you can through Healing Light and Blueberry Potions if you're desperate is a must. Anne cannot defend herself at all, so you need to be hyper-vigilant of her health bar at all times. Beyond that, you might just need some luck. If you find yourself dying over and over again no matter what you do, I suggest grinding maybe three to five levels.
7. Pair Miki With The Sage Role ASAP
MP isn't really a problem in this game, but casting time is. Signeturgy tends to take a long time to cast, long enough that trying to fire a healing spell can kill your team as much as a boss. Reducing this casting time is extremely important, especially for boss battles later in the game than can last twenty minutes or longer. These bosses also tend to have ridiculously overpowered AoE attacks, and the AI for your party members is dumb enough to get sucked right into them. So keeping your party alive with healing spells is tantamount.
The Sage role will help tremendously, so much so that it may just be the most important in the game. By leveling both the Invoker and Healer role to Level 5, you'll unlock the Sage role which reduces signeturgy casting time by 10% for every level. At the maximum level of 7, that's a reduction of a whopping 70%. As an added benefit, it enhances the judgment of the AI controlling Miki as well. This will allow you to spam Faerie Healing and Faerie Light over and over again, keeping your party members healthy and continuing the onslaught.
8. Cook Up HP Bonuses, Now!
In most RPGs, cooking tends to be that skill that's just happy to be there, neat but mainly optional. In Star Ocean 5, though, cooking items that boost HP are extremely powerful and are highly recommended before you enter a boss battle. Like other crafting specialities, you can level cooking to level 8, where you can craft dishes like Tears of Joysotto that increase your party's HP and MP by 20% for 5 battles. Other high-level food items will provide substantial +30% buffs for all of the basic stats (ATK, DEF, INT, MEN) if don't have an HP-boosting item.
Increasing HP and MP max has the extra benefit of also raising the strength of healing items since they are based on percentages. Ingredients are available pretty much in every shopping area in the game, so you'll have plenty of food to create. As a replacement of Tears of Joysotto, I recommend Crab Meat Stew which is easier to craft and gives an HP boost of 30%. MP really isn't really a problem in the game given how large MP bars become and how inexpensive blackberries are.
9. Check Welch's Laboratory Often
Once you reach the town of Myiddok, you can find Welch's laboratory across from the weapons vendor. The cutscenes involving Welch are overdone and aren't that funny, but you'll need to get through them if you want to fill out the specialties page. Her laboratory is responsible for unlocking all of the crafting specialties in the game, like cooking, alchemy, engineering, synthesis, and augmentation. To unlock them, you'll need to complete an item fetch quest for each specialty, mainly done by finding an enemy in a particular region and slaying it for the item she needs.
10. Clear Cathedral of Oblivions Before Reaching the Final Boss
Randomly spawning in various maps across the Faykreed as dark purple vortexes, the Cathedral of Oblivion will challenge your team to defeat a sequence of increasingly difficult enemy groups for treasures. At the first moment you gain access to these cathedrals, they will be far more difficult than the general enemies in the field, so you'll want to make sure that you're carrying cooking items that will boost your party's HP, MP, and other general stats before entering. You'll want to do this anyway since once you enter the second floor of the cathedral, you won't be able to return.
Near the end of the game, these Cathedral of Oblivion locations will expand from three battles to seven battles in sequence, ending with a gargantuan storm dragon that has an insane amount of HP. A single whack of its tail or ground pound from the sky can knock out 8K to 10K of health, so you'll likely need to have Miki on overdrive, healing your party with Faerie Light at any slight dent in HP and using Resurrection if you're unlucky. Watch out for the dragon's tornado spells as well and dodge as carefully as possible. I also recommend bringing the best buffing cooking items, of course.
If you can defeat the storm dragon, you'll be able to open the chest it guards which contains some of the strongest weapons in the game. Doing so will make future battles much easier to handle, and the final boss an absolute breeze.
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