AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Ninja is only good for dodge abuse, which is really only good against the 6 dragons, and dual wielding, which is only good when you are using basic attacks against single foes with low defenses, so never.
The only things worth dual wielding are shields, and even then, situational.

Anyway, I beat everything in the game. Except nemeses, but I can't fight more until I get them.

With added Hawkeye and Precision it gets significantly stronger.
Dark Arts will use both attack stats combined, so dark Bane, Black Bane, rage do a lot more damage than for Dark Knight too.
And Utsusemi + the Red mage ability that gives you a BP when you dodge is super nice and useful, especially on other jobs that have paper defenses like ranger.

Dual wield takes up two slots, two-handed, only one.
Dual wield is like lvl 12 from ninjas, two-handed is like lvl 2 from knights, which you have from chapter 1.
Ninjas have the same base strength of a vampire but fewer cool tricks, only one S rank in the worst of weapons, and an E in axes compared to a B, which is good enough to just slap on one without worrying about lore.
If you suddenly need to equip a shield for an immunity, two-handed attack only goes down to 66%, dual wield goes down to 50%.
Two-handed only requires purchasing/finding one good weapon, dual wielding requires two, and you need to have good rank in both of them.
One of the few good things about dual wielding is getting specials from multiple weapon types, but wielding more than one type means needing good ranking in both of those types. In the case of staff and rod for a mage, your phys. atk never comes into play, so you can just slap them both on without dual wield.

Now the thing about dark arts with dual wielding, you aren't getting two attacks for every dark bane the way you are when you use a basic attack, and special abilities don't rely on accuracy, so hawkeye and precision do nothing for it. At that point it has no real advantage over two-handed. Unless you just use basic attacks, at which point, what's the purpose of dark arts? Also, precision is lvl 13 ability for ranger, so not usable until late game or needed grinding, or get lucky with your abilinks.

Ninjas and Rangers have the best Dexterity though. Slap a good lore on them and they do ridiculous damage even with normal attacks. Dual Wield and Two-Handed are basically interchangable though.
At the end of the game I had Edea as Ranger with Axe lore, two-handed, precision and the Giant axe = 3000-4000 damage per normal attack. Which is pretty nice.
on Ringabel I had Ninja with Dark Arts cause inherent dual wielding saves me a slot I'd have to use for two-handed. put on whatever the strongest thing is for him, hawkeye for attacking, dark arts, mostly spamming Rage -> minus strike -> minus strike -> minus strike after utsusemi.
Would have been better if I bothered maxing Spirit master with him for 9998 damage per minus strike.
Alternatively when the Blood blade was still good, blood blade -> rage -> rage again -> rage again. Though that didn't work out always.

i should have tried the thing that doubles the amount of hits per attack with the support ability that raises the max from 16 to 32, that would probably have increased damage even more.

My final setup was

Agnes, Time mage/Red mage, group cast all + ailment amp + bp recovery. She would either use poison poison poisona on my guys to to max out their bp with bp recovery, or buff all with protect, shell, re-raise, regen, or haste. Group cast all means I don't need to waste 4 individual turns for each buff.
Tiz, Freelancer/Salve-Maker, attack item amp, item critical, bp recovery, shield lore, def up 10%. Would use dark bane followed by mimiced shaowflares, or giant's drafts if I felt the need for double hp. Also, a bravely seconded giant's drafted dragon breath with amp and crit in bravely second is 54000, which isn't much compared to others but it's fucking awesome. I originally had dual shields on him, but then I gave him a foxtail to wiled for his speed and dropped dual shields.
Ringabel, Vampire/Time Mage, phantom weapon, two-handed, bp recovery. Vamps have rank B in axes, which was good enough to get 6100 with fireball and 9999 with spells after phantom weapon from a Giant's Axe. He was time mage because in the team-fire battle in chapter 8 I had to have him slow Qada and haste Mephilia, which group-cast Agnes could not do. At least time mage let me mix it up with 9999 meteor instead of 9999 blizaja/firaja/thundaja every turn. He also had that headgear that reduced MP cost by 25%, so he would take 2 rounds of continuous casting before he needed to MP drain. I also had him stat steal, to debuff the bosses and buff himself. Even better, since he used both m.atk and p.atk for spells, it was beneficial to steal both in more ways than just debuffing. I could have just gone pirate for debuffs but giant's drafted White Wind is essentially a megalixer without the MP. I could have gone for another class than time mage for later battles though, but it never became necessary.
Edea, Batman/Templar, bp recovery, two-hand, gloom, drain up, axe lore. I was considering Pirate/Batman, but the significant drop in armor rank bothered me. Once at 3 BP, I could rage, life or death, then rage again. Life or death activates BP recovery. I would equip a blood sword at my first brave, use it, then de-equip it on my second action so I would always have sword-magic drain. Dark bane from tiz ensured that I never hit below 8000. Though, with prate/dark knight, I could put bp limit up in place of axe lore, and do rage life or death rage rage, and also would never have to wait for my first life or death or adversity to reach 9999.

Of them all I say Tiz was most broken, because giant's draft.

Oh yeah thanks for reminding me, I haven't done the true ending yet. I should go do that.
I had Agnes as dedicated healer and Tiz as Vampire and backup healer. No fancy stuff.
Never used bravely second, it's kinda OP.

The only times I used it were on gigas lich with elixer, or when I was first testing it out with torrent since my pirate was already doing 9999 on water weakness back when I got it. Abilink is very OP.

One day, I plan to route a speedrun of this game. It's likely to reach PSX Final Fantasy levels of time, 8 hours or more. Trying to decide how to best use Norende with the 20 demo villagers and 3-5 street pass villagers I could get in that time period.

I started the game today, how do I complete Ringabel's transformation into Michael Jackson

You get the performer asterisk in Eisenberg, the 3rd crystal's continent.

Oh yeah my friend code is 3566-2042-7292 if you want weak things

PM me so I can fiend you

So is anyone else upset by the later chapters just being rehashes of what you achieved in the first four?
Also the boss rush sidequests of chapter 7 are hard as hell. I can't beat the Black Blades at the moment.

A little upset, but the crystal bosses are significantly easier since you know their strats so you can speed ahead to the end if you so choose, and the asterisk bosses get extra lines.
Orthos- use spiritmaster
Rusalka- use spiritmaster
Chaugmar- use vampire or salve-maker (fireball or a compounding attack respectively)
Gigas Lich- Bravely Second Elixer

This song may or may not be playing on loop right now on my laptop

I got me a copy of this, had similar experiences with sold-out Game Stops. Having a blast, so here's my friend code. Ring-a-ding-ding makes a fun monk... he can Brave most basic encounters into the dirt so far.

Friend Code: 2122-7459-4921

I just started this game. While the actua combat isn't that special, I just have such a love for the job system. Now I just need to figure out what the most game breaking combinations are.