Insane Difficulty: Laith - Viewing Profile - Insane Difficulty

I used to think there might be a problem on my end as well. (HDD, 5400 RPM here). It took maybe 1, 2 minutes tops, but never as much as you mentioned...

Emmy, on 24 March 2017 - 01:39 PM, said:

I see STDs have been removed.

I'm just lurking the thread when it gets a new post, I don't intend to chime in just yet as I don't really have anything to add to what's already been said, but...

FFT actually seems to have a pretty good AI, or that's the impression I've gotten from playing Monster Tactics, which has added a lot of other elements to consider, from abilities to status effects, and the AI uses most of it effectively.

Some units in 1.3 are flagged as immortal (you can identify them by seeing how they have little stars above them when they drop dead, instead of the usual counter), thus rendering them immune to certain status effects; petrify and dead statuses included.

I recall that there's at least a couple of units in that battle that are flagged as immortal (at least one of the monks comes to mind, if you're referring to the first Zalmo battle).

Also, make sure you check they're not wearing any equipment to defend themselves against said status effects.

The levels in the endgame in Content are also set. You might as well keep a save outside the end sequence and finish the story, then come out to try going to the Deep Dungeon, but that'd require you to level to 99 as you mentioned.

At that point, yeah, I'd advise you to start a regular run of 1.3.