Here's the last wizard of this game, and quite an interesting one at that, too. Noel is essentially a hybrid of a cleric and an attack mage, carrying roughly equal amounts of both healing and damage spells.
But that's not all; Noel can equip several pieces of fighter gear. This generally works out to his favor, as the defense they grant is usually more helpful than the intelligence on wizard gear, although the latter does have some spiffy pieces with elemental absorbs on them. Still, I had high hopes of his broader equipment selection paying off.
As you can see in this screenshot, he starts off as a guest, which means he can't swap out anything until he joins "for real". This happens at the end of the Cave of Crimson Crystals. Like with Celine and Leon, I'll attempt to complete his first challenge with him in this state, and only switch to a full party if he's not up to the task.
Noel starts with 800 SP and 400 BP. This is not as big as you'd think, but it's still a thoughtful gift that gives some decent flexibility in building him up. Of course, the correct choice is always investing in Determination and Godspeed first.
Noel started the journey comfortably enough. His spells didn't hit too hard, but he was a pretty swift attacker with decent damage, and his initial weapon had an innate Meteor Ring property!
I also discovered that he could innately poison foes with Tetanus Wind. Now, while the spell was rather risky to use, as it kept him in place for its duration, it did cast quite fast, did pretty good shield damage, and often hit its targets with the poison ailment. That made his trip through the Cave of Crimson Crystals a breeze, though I had to keep an eye out for whenever he got pummelled during a spellcast. He also had to run from cockatrices, as they were outright immune to poison and took too long to wear down.
The Arachnovias were a bit troublesome, but only a bit. Once he ingested an Ointment of Veda and speeded himself up, he could kite them comfortably. I did notice that Tetanus Wind wasn't reliably poisoning them, and so made him use a Stink Gel. That improved the spell's odds of inflicting poison, and easily dispatched them.
Noel's best weapon was the Kaiser Knuckles. Every other option didn't seem that appealing, save for the Serpent's Tooth which could inflict instant death. I would swap between the two, one for random vulnerable encounters, and the other for boss fights. He could also equip the Mithril Mesh, and pair it with the Rune Shoes and the Dream Crown. He couldn't equip fighter shields, but thankfully the Rune Buckler was so solid he didn't need to.
The Field of Might was uneventful. He broke out Blood Scylla a few times to amuse himself and to sustain his health. It actually drained a respectable amount of HP, almost enough to make up for its spellcasting time, which wasn't too bad even without any investment into Hasten Speech. With this spell, he was more or less set for the moment. The Guardian was no threat, nor were the enemies of the Field of Courage.
Out of curiosity, I tested if he could sustain wearing a Bloody Armor off Blood Scylla alone. He almost could, but his offensive output dropped so hard that I didn't feel compelled to use it, even if it offered theoretical immortality.
Before long, he was at the final stretch of bosses. Barchian and the Wise Men before the Beam Trio gave him little trouble. One thing that did stand out was that he actually got some decent use out of the intelligence boosting items - they buffed Blood Scylla, and thus let him heal from his scrapes pretty easily. Especially since it was now being speeded up considerably by Hasten Speech.
The Beam Trio was unremarkable, this was still Galaxy difficulty after all. The Michael-Haniel duo and Lucifer are complete jokes for someone wearing a Dream Crown, so I'm not going to dignify them with words. In no time, he was facing the steps to Gabriel himself.
Noel was extremely aggressive with Gabriel, combining Blood Scylla with his own punches. While he wasn't fundamentally much different from other characters who had to rely on their melee attacks, Blood Scylla allowed him to ignore Divine Waves and continue attacking him with little danger, as he also healed himself in the process. As such, this fight went amazingly fast, and he felled Gabriel in record time.
Noel had a fairly strong kit, despite being a spellcaster. Tetanus Wind, while somewhat risky, let him poison lots of enemies innately, which was very helpful for his first dungeon. Then Blood Scylla let him attack at range while healing himself, which was a powerful combination indeed. To round the whole list off, he could clear debuffs with Neutralize, buff his accuracy with Bless, and even remove enemy buffs with Curse, though the latter rarely came up. As I predicted, the options for fighter armor alongside mage gear helped tremendously, letting him combine decent defense with some of their elemental absorption/negation properties.
It will be interesting to see how he holds up in Universe, as defense is considerably diminished in role there, and enemies will likely do enough damage to overpower his Blood Scylla. But that's going to be for next entry. Until then!
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