Immeasurable foolishness from I
Up until the Cave to the Sealed Gate I did two wonderfully foolish things:
I didn't equip any espers. I didn't even know that was possible.
I thought the Rage menu had the entire catalog of rages and only used the one rage I knew I'd acquired: Bomb.
This led to some horrid consequences. The fight with the boss in the train sequence was horrendous and used up a lot of my items and my sanity. I ran out of Hi-Potions in the Magitek Factory and during the crane fight put Gau on the Bomb rage. Without Cure all of my party died after defeating the ice crane, while Gau used Blaze continuously on the crane (healing it) and the crane did its thermal reaction thing and used a Fire attack (healing Gu) causing an endless battle loop softlock. I defeated the Cranes barely with Sabin alive by 4 HP.
Now I learnt... I could've breezed through. No wonder
Now I learnt my suffering was useless.
Now I learnt Gau wasn't a holy savior to all, but only to esperless me, even with most of his catalog inaccessible.