Put together, I could try and make Rydia into a physical attacker, if I wanted to, for some reason. Or I could buff Rosa (she can't equip the whip but she can equip the Bustier), which given how often I have her use her bow in random encounters would be genuinely a boost in power… at a huge cost to her healing?
It's such a strange option to propose here at the 11th hour.
Another quick Magical Land of Yeld digression. So, the basic resolution mechanic of the game involves making dicepools from your core stats + "special dice". Special dice are basically skills, for the most part: you have a series of knowledge skills for various subjects, acrobatics, etc. Some are more specific, though, like Charge, which adds to all your rolls, but only in the first round of battle.
One interesting thing about it is that straight bonuses to attack are very rare and hard to get. I think it's generally done to promote debuff attacks, because getting them is pretty easy. It helps counter the usual bias against debuffs since they're actually far more likely to land than regular attacks, even if they do prolong the fight.
One of the few exceptions to this is Black Mage job, which allows you to take Sacrifice special dice. Sacrifice adds to all your dagger attacks, plus gives a bonus to the spell you cast after a successful attack. Now, the obvious use for it is to stab an enemy and pivot to casting, of course, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from heavily investing in it and just stabbing enemies in the face all day every day.
I do appreciate the ability to play a mage whose magic is knives. Just knives.
(Though, granted, since the game uses the job system, and since special dice are transferrable between jobs, you're more likely to spend some time as a mage, gain levels in Sacrifice, then switch to another job that would better benefit from it, but still.)
Ah yes, this scene. Making it even dumber is the fact that at no point before this did any of the male characters have any objection to the female characters getting involved in things. So Cecil had no problem bringing Rosa into the previously unknown underground world that was inevitably going to be full of horrible monsters, or bringing Rosa and Rydia with him when he went to take down the Giant of Babil, or bringing Porom, who need I remind you is a five-year-old child who probably actually was out of her depth, with him to storm Baron Castle. But letting Rosa and Rydia help out in the final dungeon, where the gang would absolutely get their asses handed to them without their help? Clearly that's a bridge too far.
Yeah, at this point it's just weird. Like, the game didn't have an issue with allowing Rydia to rescue Cecil and Co back then, and afterwards Cecil didn't have any issues with her presence because, well, he'd be dead without her and she clearly knows what she's doing, so doing this scene now feels especially tone-deaf.
The game is just showing us the tragedy of sexism preventing men from wearing bustiers.
And that is the reason why TWEWY is strictly superior as far as JRPGs go.
(Also better at character customization through outfits. The high-risk set that put your HP in the red at the start of the battle but gave ridiculous bonuses to all stats so long as you remained in the red was very fun, even if I couldn't reliably use it against bosses.)
