Shattered Heart - A Shrine to MOMO Mizrahi from Xenosaga

Xenosaga III: Battle Strategy

If you thought Episode II's battles were extremely different, Episode III's battles are a completely different universe! The system actually reverts back to a traditional RPG-style menu. Additionally, shops and money make a comeback so there are several adjustments to MOMO's battle strategy.

In general, MOMO can have a few roles in battle: healer, spell attacker, physical attacker, or any combination of the three. Since MOMO learns all healing spells, healer is MOMO's official category. Plus, with her high EATK, these spells tend to heal a lot. If you're going with MOMO as healer, I suggest you go into the extended SKills Tree as well so that she learns the Break Heals, the only vital healing spells she never learns automatically.

Spell Attacker is another popular option for MOMO. This option is MOMO's Skill Path A (top path) and is filled with every elemental spell (Fire/Ice/Thunder/Beam Bolts) and plenty of EATK/EDEF upgrades, making it a good option to choose if you want to use MOMO as a healer. Most enemies, especially at the beginning to middle portion of the game, have some elemental weakness. If you equip something that lets you auto-analyze the enemy, like an Eagle Scope, you can easily see their weakness and use MOMO's corresponding spell attack. Furthermore, if you keep up with the shopping and buy MOMO the latest Ether Bows, you'll find that these spells, when tapping the right weakness, can be one-hit wonders.

The last class available is the Physical Attacker class, which is Skill Path B (the bottom) of MOMO's Skill tree. Here, MOMO's path is filled with a ton of statistical upgrades (particularly HP/ATK/DEF) and a handful of Tech Attacks. It's important to remember that since the developers made MOMO more Ether oriented by default, you have to make up the slack if you're going to go with this path. This can be done by including MOMO in battle a lot or even just by keeping up with her weapons shopping. Her Tech arsenal, although small, is filled with a lot of good, strategic techs, filling up break gauges or diffusing to several enemies at once. However, my friend Bobbi has discovered that it is possible for MOMO to do more damage than even Ziggy using "Swordfish" and when tweaked right.

My personal suggestion is to do a little bit of everything. My emphasis is always on the Spell Attacker path, but the diffusion attacks (Inferno, Blizzard, etc) are very low proiority for me, so learning them can be pushed back a bit in my book. Thus, MOMO is always the Healer/Spell Attacker. I then teach MOMO some of her Techs, particularly attacks like "Break Arrow I" are useful early on and "Swordfish" is a miracle later on. You can choose whether or not you want to add her Break Heal spells to her arsenal, but remember those only take up more Skill Points. It'd probably balance out nicely if you don't don't follow the Tech Attack path until later though.

In order to get the best out of MOMO, I suggest you do a few things. Try to have her in her party as much as possible. If not all the time, get her into the party by the time you finish the battle so she's one of the three to get the most experience. Also, try to Finish Strike every boss. That 1.5 times goes a long way, especially in ES battles near the end of the game (ES battles will give MOMO experience as well!). You'll also want to buy MOMO the latest Ether Bows. If you do, she'll probably be one of the most useful characters in the game. Finally, equip her with equipment that raises her Ether Points (EP). MOMO is in serious trouble if she runs out of EP so you want her max EP to be very high. Heaven's Door is a helpful accessory (EP cost = 1) and it's also good to have an Analyzing accessory so that MOMO will be able to see Elemental weaknesses no matter which characters she battles with.

Even though MOMO isn't the "juggernaut" she was in Episode II, MOMO can be the best character to use when strategically developed. MOMO's been a great character to use for all three episodes. I can't wait to see what new character there is on Xenosaga Frontier that we can all love (maybe like MOMO!).

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