Depends on how you play.

Status effects are a big deal, and there aren't barriers preventing the party from wandering into a later game area with tough monsters they're not meant to fight yet.

Even if you think your party is pretty strong, you can cross a river and run into some vampire girls who charm everyone into killing themselves, or cockatrices who stone everyone because your evasion and resistance isn't high. And you didn't get esuna leveled up.

One difficulty spike that I remember well is the Colosseum dungeon. And, of course, the Death Riders and Coeurls in the last act.

I usually head south to Mysidia to get the Holy Spell and build up magic resistance as soon as Minwu joins. It's manageable with him using the Teleport and Life spells.

Originally posted by Electric Cupcake:

I usually head south to Mysidia to get the Holy Spell and build up magic resistance as soon as Minwu joins. It's manageable with him using the Teleport and Life spells.

im like.. not really trying to play the most optimized way. i'm playing through the game "linearly" or the intended way. just blew up the dreadnought

With your builds as they are my recommendation would be to make sure you are leveling up some damage and status spells. And once you unlock Dispel (tbf it comes fairly far into the game), level it up too. Literally everything in the game can be made easier in some way via statuses, and casting single-target damage spells with a high Int/Spi stat can one-shot everything in the game short of the final boss. Dispel removes enemy resistances to damage and statuses if it hits (but not absorptions), and it works on every enemy including the final boss.

Even when doing random battles where you do not 'need' to cast spells, I recommend casting spells anyway with your mages, both to increase your max MP and also to just level up the spells. You will thank yourself later for having a decently leveled up Curse, or Blind, or Stun. Curse reduces enemy attack/defense by half, and if used against certain high-defense enemies (say, the Captains in Finn town), can make you go from dealing 0 without a crit to hundreds of physical attack damage with a single debuff, while also massively reducing enemy physical damage inflicted on you. Blind reduces enemy accuracy by half, which coupled with decent Evasion on your party can make even hard-hitting boss enemies start missing repeatedly. FF2 is definitively the best game in the series for status spells.

Personally I never encountered a specific spike in difficulty, but I also blasted everything away with what amounted to overleveled ranks of damage spells for most of the game. I like Red Mage Firion too. But, if you ever do hit a point where you suddenly hit a wall, FF2 is also the game in the series with the most to gain by grinding. The level of overwhelming potential power possible for the player to grind to in FF2 is only rivaled by the FF8 junction system allowing you to have 99% evade and also 100% resist/absorb to every element and status at the same time. Effectively invincible. If you put in the time to do so.

Originally posted by SolusEmsu:

With your builds as they are my recommendation would be to make sure you are leveling up some damage and status spells. And once you unlock Dispel (tbf it comes fairly far into the game), level it up too. Literally everything in the game can be made easier in some way via statuses, and casting single-target damage spells with a high Int/Spi stat can one-shot everything in the game short of the final boss. Dispel removes enemy resistances to damage and statuses if it hits (but not absorptions), and it works on every enemy including the final boss.

Even when doing random battles where you do not 'need' to cast spells, I recommend casting spells anyway with your mages, both to increase your max MP and also to just level up the spells. You will thank yourself later for having a decently leveled up Curse, or Blind, or Stun. Curse reduces enemy attack/defense by half, and if used against certain high-defense enemies (say, the Captains in Finn town), can make you go from dealing 0 without a crit to hundreds of physical attack damage with a single debuff, while also massively reducing enemy physical damage inflicted on you. Blind reduces enemy accuracy by half, which coupled with decent Evasion on your party can make even hard-hitting boss enemies start missing repeatedly. FF2 is definitively the best game in the series for status spells.

Personally I never encountered a specific spike in difficulty, but I also blasted everything away with what amounted to overleveled ranks of damage spells for most of the game. I like Red Mage Firion too. But, if you ever do hit a point where you suddenly hit a wall, FF2 is also the game in the series with the most to gain by grinding. The level of overwhelming potential power possible for the player to grind to in FF2 is only rivaled by the FF8 junction system allowing you to have 99% evade and also 100% resist/absorb to every element and status at the same time. Effectively invincible. If you put in the time to do so.

I actually just got to Mysidia and I'm on the way to the tropical island. So far I've found the game to be a bit dull... I wasn't grinding at all and yet every encounter I one shot, or just apply berserk and then one shot. So far things have gone pretty smoothy, i leveled protect, shell, berserk, cure, basuna, esuna and fire. I'm working on scourge and I'll go ahead and grab Dispel. I was levelling some debuffs for a while but they just kept missing over and over and most bosses I killed in 2 or 3 round so I sorta started slacking. I was levelling curse for a good while it's like level 5 now. I definitely wouldn't say it's the "best game in the series for status" i definitely have found FF5 to be a lot better status wise. Simply cause my experience so far as been statuses just... really aren't necessary.

When I say FF2 is the best game in the series for status, I meant the strength of status effects. And yes, you kinda have to level them up to around level 4 before they start becoming consistent, but if you are not running into enemies which challenge you they are not necessary. But if you want to, you can do what I did and turn the final boss into a crippled mute. With Dispel -> Curse+Blind+Fog+Slow .. at that point the enemy can only physically attack, will only have 1 hit per round, will miss most of the time, and even if the hit lands will do pitiful damage. It is not really 'necessary' and is absolutely overkill, but if you are having trouble, it works. Just have to level the spells up enough to become reliable at landing.

My advice is more that IF you run into an enemy which walls you, statuses will easily break that wall. Curse in particular is very good. Berserk is a good alternative to overcoming physical defense, though. They do the same target effect of overcoming high defense, just one debuffs the enemy and the other buffs your party. They do stack, as well.

But yeah if you are that far in and not having any issues, honestly you are probably good for the rest of it. Only some final-area enemies might trouble you now, due to a few late-game enemies having strong on-hit effects. At that point, Blink might be helpful. Or just kill them faster, of course!