Dragon Quest VIII (some spoilers)
As I previously mentioned, I recently finished with my second playthrough of DQ8. This time, I decided to use a guide to select which skills that my characters should learn. Three skills in particular made a huge difference: Thin Air, Caduceus, and Omniheal. I avoided Fisticuffs and Staves entirely on my first time through the game, and didn’t get too far in Courage to learn Omniheal. I had Yangus learn Thin Air as soon as possible, which proved to be useful throughout almost the entire game. It’s a 2-MP attack that hits all enemies at once, and having a character like Yangus – who mostly does strong damage to a single enemy at a time – made some of the random battles go much, much smoother. Caduceus was a Staff skill that both Jessica and Angelo could learn. It was basically a free version of Midheal that allowed me to win an exceptionally tough mid-game battle on my first try, when most of my characters had run out of MP. I didn’t learn Omniheal until very late in the game, but it’s the only group-healing spell that the Hero can learn, and it made the postgame bosses that I fought go much smoother.
As far as the second ending goes, I think it should have been worked into the actual game. My first time through the game took me 90 hours and my second one took me 70, and honestly, they could have removed one of the more pointless quests to make room for the Dragovian story.