Part 2- Item Synthesis
Part 3- Sephiroth and Data Organization members #13-#8
Part 4- Data Organization members #7-#4
Part 5- Data Organization members #3-#1
Part 6- Duel with the Lingering Will
Figured I'd make an entry-level guide to 2 Final Mix's extra bosses and the preparation for them. If you've played or are playing Lvl 1 critical you'll probably not find much use for this (and could probably one-up me in knowledge, which I encourage you to do for the sake of people who are looking into going that route.)
As a word of warning, it's been awhile since I've played the game (my PS2's Broke) and I don't know the official translations of items, so details may be off here or there.
Part 1: The fundamentals and leveling up.
Pre-challenge pointers: For first-timers I recommend you be at least in the 70's or higher for the Data replicas.(And Sephiroth, if you're not confident in your skills) They have excellent damage output, and if you haven't gotten a full grasp of how they work it's going to be a rough experience. The Lingering Will is something you really shouldn't be ashamed to go to level 99 for, just so you get more leeway to get hit (as well as a better chance to survive his most insidious attack).
-Essential strategies-
1.) For the love of God, use your shortcuts. This is mostly targeted at first-timers, but it's easy to forget how much shortcuts and shortcut setup can make or break a fight. Items and Magic are both available to equip on shortcuts. Cure and reflect should be stuck on the two most convenient buttons 99% of the time. The other two slots can usually be whatever you want (I personally prefer thunder and gravity), with a few exceptions I'll note when I actually get to the bosses.
2.) Abuse Drive forms. One of my favorite tricks in KH2: whenever you enter a drive form, your HP and MP (I think?) are automatically restored to full. Use this for healing when your MP is depleted. You can either revert immediately or try to pummel your adversary in Drive mode, though the latter is very risky. There is a risk of going into anti-form this way, however. If it proves to be a problem use Final form beforehand on the next attempt. It reverts the Anti-Form chance to its minimum, so you can use subsequent drives without risking a change into anti-form.
2.a) Abuse limit breaks, if they're available and safe to use, Limits can give you scads of invincibility frames while dealing immense damage. Special mention goes to Goofy's limit, Tornado Fusion. Credit to Fauve for this one
3.) Limit form: One of Final Mix's more important new additions, Limit form requires no party members, and as such can be used in nearly all fights after you acquire it. Limit form is granted the dodge roll, and on top of this, the form's special attacks regenerate HP, including Strike raid, which is extremely powerful and easy to use.Limit form also has access to the powerful Zantetsuken combo finisher, which has the best damage output of any finsisher in the game, barring possibly limits. (Credit to Seven_Force for that) This makes it a potent defensive asset, and should be your go-to form choice in most Boss battle situations.
4.) Reflect reflect reflect reflect reflect. This is THE best magic spell in Kingdom Hearts 2. Damage immunity to nearly everything as well as dealing damage to anything within melee range. If you're having problems blocking something or you're being attacked from behind or afar, reflect solves almost all of your problems.
Except enemies using Aeroga
5.) Learn to guard! This is one of those things even returning players are going to neglect, since the original Kingdom Hearts 2 was pathetically easy. Guard is very useful for stopping some bosses in their tracks and keeping them from getting in combos. Marluxia, Lexaeus and Axel in particular demand you learn how to guard effectively.
6.) Get dodge roll from Leveling up limit form. Quick Run (earned form Wisdom form) has its uses, but dodge roll provides more consistent invincibility frames and is much easier to control. Once you get dodge roll there's little reason to keep quick run(and in fact if you try to have both equipped you're almost sure to end up doing a Quick Run when you want Dodge Roll and vice versa).
7.) Your party members aren't completely useless. They will indeed die within a minute 90% of the time, but while they're still alive they can use items and spells to assist you. This can be a huge help in tight situations and you shouldn't overlook their item inventories for especially difficult fights. Make sure to set their AI to conserve items, because they're liable to use them all up quickly otherwise. As a side note, disable all of Donald's offensive magic. No reason for him to use any of it over cure.
8.) As a final point, if you're finding that bosses keep nailing you mid-combo, it may be worthwhile to reduce the amount of combo plus and finisher plus abilities so that it doesn't take as long to finish a string of attacks. You may not do as much damage over time, but that's preferable to being slammed in the middle of an offensive and having the tables turned against you.
-Leveling up-
Unlike vanilla Kingdom Hearts 2, there is sadly no hotspot for level grinding. At the very least, you can go to The World That Never Was, equip the Gullwing Keyblade, bring yourself close to death and go ham with Final Form using Graviga and your keyblade. This doubles as a good way to level up Final Form as well. This should go by reasonably quick (maybe 4-6 hours if you're going for level 99.)
-Form Leveling-
This is probably one of the more annoying mechanics in Kingdom Hearts 2, since all 5 forms have different requirements to gain experience. The main trick used to level up drive forms effectively is heading to the World map from a save point before the drive gauge expires. Doing this resets the drive gauge to maximum and allows you to use drive forms over and over so long as you return to the save point before it runs out.
Valor Form: Mushroom #5 in the Cave of Wonders' treasure room. Right next to a save point and #5 is incredibly beefy, so you won't have to keep looking for new targets.
Wisdom Form: Heartless Swarm in the first street (coming from Twilight Town) in the World That Never Was. A humongous amount of heartless are ripe for the picking. Make good use of your keyblade shots and magic to rip them to pieces. Timeless River's Black Hole room is also good for doing this earlier in the game.
Master Form: Head to twilight town and enter the mysterious tower. Head up until you meet a squad of hgambler nobodies. If you use drive converter and jackpot and repeatedly play their minigames, you can get scads of drive orbs to level up and stay in master form longer. (Credit to Seven_Force again)
Final Form: World that Never Was, starting in the room just before the Hall of Empty Melodies (Where you fought Xigbar). The route between here and the Proof of Existence (The Nobody gravestone room) has a large amount of weak nobodies that can be shredded to pieces with a healthy application of Graviga and keyblade strikes.
Limit form: Can be leveled in the same place as Valor form. Since #5 is so difficult to actually kill, you'll be able to fire off your limits in succession. Even better is that he won't attempt to interrupt your limits.
-Part 2 coming soon-
Next up is the synthesis stuff, which I should have by the end of the night. Bosses are going to take a little bit longer, since I have to look back through my own posts on the subject and attempt to recall what I can from memory.