Whew, finished that punishing challenge and it was pretty tough. Those first 3 boss fights were pretty rough and I had to spend some time gaining levels in the Catacombs to defeat Gilex and Miles. Also, it didn't seem like the Archon would ever run out of HPs, but thanks to the mashing of the Minotaur and Giant, it eventually did. Anyhow, to others who have won this mode, I salute you and those who haven't won it yet, good luck. It's a grind, but it's winnable.

I don't remember whether I actually beat 1980's mode, but I do remember playing through most of the mode. Late game, status ailments become ridiculously powerful. Battles often boil down to whether you can disable the enemies before they have a chance to act. Good choices for inflicting status ailements are the Minotaur (the 6 (I think) EN attack that stuns), the Giant (has an attack that is similar to the Minotaur's stun), and the Imp (has Sleep, which is overpowered because enemies don't wake up when hit with a special attack).

By the way, Sleep really should be nerfed. It should be changed so that any attack on a sleeping character will wake her up. As is, once an enemy casts Sleep, you might as well consider the battle lost.

Anyway, for new players, I recommend that you stay out of 1980's mode on your first playthrough. Hard is definitely hard enough, and the late game can kill you even on Easy.

That's some good advice from dtgreene. I agree that Hard is a sufficient challenge for most people while 1980's is for those of us (and you know who you are) that just have to win it all. The status effects are particularly important (may I also add the goblin as a suggestion since he can get high AGI to go first and hit all enemies at once with status effects). Even so, end up against someone with Wild Swing (Barbarian types) or Running Slash (Samurai and lvl 40 Swordsmen I think), and it's generally time to reload once they use that. It was still fun, but you should try to balance your party better than I did (Sorcerer, Vampire, Minotaur, Shadow, and Giant) to give greater adaptability and reduce reliance on the gem of recall for rest and revive crystals.