Originally posted here on 2022-07-09.

After last week’s teaser, fave number two finally became playable in DFFOO yesterday morning, and I spent a good hour in a hotel room in Poland diligently maxing him. Once again, I have a lot of unnecessarily pedantic quibbles with the actual storyline of the chapter, but will save those for the conclusion of this thrilling saga (a fascinating read, I’m sure) – this post is just a few notes on Braska as a playable character.

Maxing a character in DFFOO currently consists of:

• Raising crystal strength to 90: turns out I was lacking one of the lower crystals but I got enough very quickly from quests.
• Raising level to 90: I have a huge surfeit of chocobo down so this was very quick.
• Summon boards: I’d hoarded a lot of both. I never bother too much about choosing “the best” passive abilities on the summon boards, I just pick a random selection I guess.
• Limit breaking each of the four usual weapons (15CP, 35CP, EX, LD) three times and fully upgrading them, plus realising the EX and limit breaking that one another four times. I exchanged power tokens for the 15CP and 35CP but probably would have drawn enough while I was trying to get the FR.
• Upgrading and realising the BT, if necessary – which it isn’t in this case. Also the 4★ armour and those random other weapons that a few characters have: again, not relevant here.
• Limit breaking the FR: Braska is only the third character to get one of these. This requires high power stones, which aren’t that plentiful at the moment, but you can exchange normal power stones for them. I went a bit overboard with this and now have something like seventeen high power stones and hardly any of the normal sort, but they seem easy enough to recuperate.
• Enhancement boards (once all the weapons are obtained): I had a lot of enhancement points stored away, so this was no problem.
• Force enhancement: this is part of the new mechanic and I didn’t know whether I’d have enough stuff to max him as I’d already done Auron, but managed to get him up to the full 30.
• Limit breaking the 35CP armour, then limit breaking and realising the 90CP armour, then limit breaking and realising the high armour. I had kept back a high armour book for this purpose – they normally come from Lufenia+ battles and I’ve never had much success with those. Now that my main party consists of characters who are mostly maxed and have had their reworks recently, I’ve cleared a couple more, so there’s scope to do some more upgrading elsewhere.
• Artifact passives: these came from the limited time event. I grabbed as many of Braska’s as I could (far more than I needed) and kept refining them until I had a full slate of oranges (also far more than I needed).
• Bloom stone: honestly, what are these even for? I keep expecting them to be retired. Nonetheless I got it and refined it, obviously.
• Spheres: one comes from fully upgrading the EX+, the other two were just whatever I had lying around. Again, this is not The Hardcore Dissidia Neckbeard Way, but whatever.
• Somewhat optionally, the ultima weapon: as usual, I’d been prioritising Auron here, so having got the big sword to sublimate level 5, I had enough ultima points to cast the staff but not sublimate it at all. This is my next task but it’s a slow process completing everyone’s missions.

Despite my yet-to-be-completely-divulged grievances about the storyline of the chapter, it’s always fun for lore purposes to see what the names of the equipment and abilities are. Braska’s weapons have the following names, ordered by ascending power:

• Monk’s Cane – ok, bizarre name alert. Since when is Braska a monk? Since when do monks use canes? Since when do summoners’ staves (ahem) count as canes, anyway?
• Mechanical Rod – I quite like the implications of this. Newly radicalised by the Al Bhed, Braska starts wielding a staff with some kind of machina component; everyone is deeply shocked by this; calamity ensues, etc.
• Braska’s Staff – this is his standard staff that we see in the game.
• High Summoner’s Staff – this one resembles a lollipop?
• Staff of Partings – his FR weapon. It looks a bit like a feather duster, tbh.

His moves and unique passive abilities are, in alphabetical order because why not:

• Come to Kill Grief Itself
• Curaga
• Fallen Summoner
• It’s Worth Trying (😭)
• Jecht Bomber (LD)
• Mixture Power (FR) – guest starring Amidatelion, who I’ve never been that taken with previously, probably because Crystal Chronicles is very low-priority in my backlog. Although the combination of this and having discovered that this character is canonically a No Pronouns means I surely ought to start paying more attention.
• Multi Summon
• Ultima
• Ultimate Jecht Shot (EX)
• Vanquisher of Sin
• Your Father’s Path

Sort of amused, sort of exasperated, that we have so little canonical Braska content that a number of these just have to be “things he said at some point in the game”. Similarly, the six voice lines we can unlock are sometimes a bit banal, probably because there really isn’t much choice.

Like in FFRK, his elemental type is fire, which is the same as Jecht here – Auron doesn’t appear to have an associated element, but he’s (he was?? rip) also fire in FFRK. I’m not aware of any in-world reasons for this, but I guess they’re just all such good mates Or Maybe More that they can’t possibly not share an elemental affinity.

Finally, here he is in all his glory: