Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

Can it be done without overleveling?

Usually, my modus operandi in this fight is to get Sarcastic Sniger on Angelo, Charm Attack on Jessica, or both, and have Angelo use Sarcastic Sniger every turn. This makes it so Captain Crow takes four turns instead of two to reach maximum tension, and that when he does attack (usually with Thin Air), most of the time it'll be at 50 tension instead of 100. Charm Attack makes him lose a turn (and any tension he's saved up) quite frequently, even without the upgraded version.

However, I'm doing a playthrough where I'm putting zero points into Sex Appeal, and I'm contemplating putting zero points into Charisma as well. I only ever put points into Charisma for Sarcastic Sniger, and then I only use it in this one fight anyway. But getting neither means I'll definitely be taking fully-tensioned Thin Airs from the Captain.

I'm wondering, have any of you tried to take him on this way (at normal levels, without grinding)? Can you survive, or is this one boss tough enough to dictate 13 of Angelo's precious Skill Points to get a move I only use once?
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I always thought he was a pretty easy boss. And I also found sarcastic sni**** to be useless.
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Killa Class1 posted...

I'm wondering, have any of you tried to take him on this way (at normal levels, without grinding)? Can you survive, or is this one boss tough enough to dictate 13 of Angelo's precious Skill Points to get a move I only use once?

Define "normal levels without grinding". Some people think "normal levels" at Dhoulmagus is to have Angelo at lv30...

Besides, most of the mid game bosses fall to lower defense + sick two monster teams on them tactic.
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Normal levels isn't Angelo 30... but it's not SOO far off either. Probably Angelo 27-28 or so. Of course, that's all the difference with multiheal. Still, level growth slows waaay down later in the game short of slime hunting, and so even if DM is Hero 28-30 or so, the final boss is probably Hero 39-44ish... and so there really isn't a big range of levels to be at for the Cap'n. Probably around 33-35 or so.

Anyway, he's pretty easy pretty much no matter what you have. He's susceptible to a lot of stuff, and has to use the tension to really be a threat, so in that sense he's a fairly predictable threat too.