Ideas to make second playthrough different from my first?

Often times with games, I limit myself on my subsequent playthroughs of the game to make it different and/or more challenging. I always go for making it different and only go for making it more challenging if it was too easy for me the first time. That is why, with FF12, I am seeking ideas to make it different without making it particularly more challenging.

So, do you lads have any ideas? The ideas I thought of are:

-Only use 3 party members instead of alternating between all 6
-Except where necessary, use weapon types I didn’t use in the first playthrough
-Except where necessary, only keep two characters in battle at a time (yet use all six)
-Make a character into a mage (Penelo, I know)
-Only arm characters with appropriate-looking weapons

Thanks! I’ll come back to see your replies to this topic and may stick around after. Sorry if this is an old, tired question (I at least checked the first 4 pages of topics).

edit: I looked around and couldn’t find anything on which characters accel with which weapons. Which characters accel with which weapons? Thanks!

I say make Penelo your wrecking ball. That’s what I do 😉

Genji Gloves + Masamune = Pain

Make Basch your mage, but don’t give him any quickenings. That should be interesting.

-Except where necessary, only keep two characters in battle at a time (yet use all six)

I did this one last playthrough – it was fun. May I suggest assigning each of your characters ‘jobs’? This is my new semi-challenge, and so far I’ve chosen to make:

– Vaan a thief. He uses daggers/knives and wears light armour. He may know basic white magicks, depending on how difficult things get.

– Balthier a ranger/gunner. He uses guns and wears light armour. He knows no magicks, but plenty of technicks.

– Fran a red mage. She uses 1-H swords and shields, and wears light armour. She knows all magicks up to about level 5 on the licence board, though that’s not a final figure.

– Basch a weaponsmaster. He uses all weapons and shields, and wears heavy armour. He knows no magicks.

– Ashe a white mage. She uses staffs or hammers, and wears magick armour. She knows all white magicks, as well as all status buffs.

– Penelo a black mage. She uses staffs or rods, and wears magick armour. She knows all black magicks and damage-causing spells, as well as all status effect spells.

It’s pretty interesting so far, if only because I’ve never used those characters with those weapons, save Balthier and Basch.

The "job system" definitely sounds like fun. I think I will try that with my next playthrough. Although, instead of making the classes set from the start, I will simply pick what I need at the time and stick with that. That way I could end up with two white mages or maybe 2 theifs or something. It would bring it back to the days of the older games where you choose the class when you get the character instead of the character always being a black mage or something.

On another note, on one of my past playthroughs I decided that I would keep everyone equipped with their starting equipment. I went through the top half of the license board like normal, but didn’t purchase any of the weapons/armor half (except to get the quickenings). It definitely made things a bit different because I found myself casting more than just the buffing magic spells. I had never really used magic that much and didn’t realize just how fun it is to spam someone with scathe/holy until then.

First, if you haven’t done before, collect all ultimate weapons/espers/hunts and also try to complete the hidden sidequests (well not hidden I guess, but kinda not in the open side-quests).

Then do the job thing (as said above by slavka)

If you want checklists for that endeavor, let me know. I’ve got 17 pages worth:

Thank you for the suggestions, everybody. I’ve decided on these:

-Except where necessary, use weapon types on each character that I didn’t use on each character in the first playthrough
-Make a character into a mage (Penelo, I know)

And I’ll try this, but stop if it becomes too hard:

-Except where necessary, only keep two characters in battle at a time (yet use all six)

The job thing sounds interesting and makes me nostalgic of Tactics and 5, but I think it’d be too limiting.

Anyways, thanks!

Try not using the summons or any magic. against anything. that should be a challenge……………………….

People actually use summons? Psssh.

No magic would probably be a nice challenge, though.

People actually use summons? Psssh.

I agree. The only time I use summonings is if i know they will use their ultimate move before they’re totally annihilated

The only summon I ever use is Belias because he has to be there to open that one gate. I could definitely see trouble with the no magic, though. Without my Cure spells, I would be toast in a lot of the later boss/mark fights.

Wear a blindfold.

Arm everyone with guns.

You may want to check out some of the Job-based License Boards defined in International Zodiac Job System and try to emulate them in the vanilla English copy.

Mix-matching character classes might be fun, too? Like having Basch as the white mage, and Penelo as the purely physical tank.