Board 8 > Andy plays Final Fantasy Tactics (Blind Playthrough)

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I - II - III - IV - (TAY) - V - VI - VII - (VIIR - DoC - CC) - VIII - IX - X - (X-2) - XII - (RW) - XIII - (XIII-2 - LR) - XV - Tactics - TA - TA2 - (TCB)

*Progressive spoilers shall follow*

My long arduous mission to beat all the single player Final Fantasy games continues with FF Tactics! It's 4th/5th in the poll depending on if you count clearly stuffed votes, but V/VI Advance could take a while to get and Delita reached the final in SMFFFC so Tactics seems fitting to do next.

Under board recommendation I will be playing the PSOne Classics original version of the game on PS3. No overflowery translations for us! I know next to nothing about this game which is very exciting, all I know is:
-It's set in Ivalice, but I don't know if there's any connection to XII.
-Delita is a great character and maybe a villain? I remember conflicting information on this, though I may be confusing him with Marche. Don't clarify this for me please!
-Ramza is the lead, and is poor, yes.
-Cloud is in this? I saw his name in some translation guide, a little confused by this honestly. This game released far too early for useless DLC/preorder bonuses so no idea why he's here.

That's it. That's all I know, I think. As far as tactical RPGs go, I have varying levels of experience with XCOM, Advance Wars, Mario + Rabbids and Fire Emblem. I'm assuming it won't be too different from one of those.

I'll probably start the game today or tomorrow so figured I'd create this topic now and ask if there's anything I should know before starting. Any missable characters/gear etc or tricky situations, any useful tips at all. Shoutout to @Evillordexdeath for giving me this advice: "whenever the game prompts you to save without returning you to the world map, make sure to save to a separate file".

Also in general I'll try to write less than I did in my IV playthrough, just general updates or cliffnotes will probably be better than overlong posts detailing the plot. No promises though, I have a tendency to ramble with stuff like this >_>

I am excited to play this alleged classic!

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Tag

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Aw yeah

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Good luck, I've failed twice to finish this game for some reason but I hope the third time's the charm!

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woo
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Glorious tag

andylt posted...

Shoutout to Evillordexdeath for giving me this advice: "whenever the game prompts you to save without returning you to the world map, make sure to save to a separate file".

Truly... this is the best advice.

Yes, speaking from experience, it's good advice.

I eventually got past it though!

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Yeah it's gonna be tomorrow that I start this.

Main Story39 Hours
Main + Extra58 Hours
Completionist96 Hours

100 hour run let's go!

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Tag, I hope you like the game! FFT is my favorite Final Fantasy game and one of my favorite games period, but its biggest problem is probably that it's not very beginner friendly. Here's a few more tips that should help you early on:

- The "Gained JP UP" skill from the Squire class is really good and it's advisable to learn it right away on all your characters
- Units with a low faith stat don't make good magic users.
- Boys make better physical attackers, girls are better at magic
- Items are quite good for healing in this game and make a good secondary skill for most classes. Phoenix Down in particular can save you from losing units. The auto-potion skill is one of the most overpowered in the game.
- Shops get new inventory after every few story battles

I don't think there's much in the way of missable content as long as you don't get the named characters killed or fire them. There's a guy named Mustadio in particular who you need to keep around to access most of the game's sidequests. One optional map near the end of the game (Nelveska Temple) has some super-powerful hidden equipment that you don't get another shot at if you finish the battle without finding them, but they're a huge pain to get and probably not worth it.


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Chemists can also throw items, so they're valuable to keep in your party early on until you can learn their Throw Item ability.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

- Boys make better physical attackers, girls are better at magic

As an exception to this rule, Ramza himself is equally good at both fighting and magic, so feel free to do whatever you want with him.

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This game gets randomly difficult at times, be prepared and have plenty of varied equipment and items

They may come in handy!

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A bunch of vague ominous phrases introduce our "Zodiac Brave Story", whatever that means. Hey, O is confirm! It really is a PS1 FF game. I see the word 'Tutorial'... right after I click on New Game. Oops!

A scholar gives us a brief introduction to the Lion War, young hero Delita, and our protagonist Ramza. The intro cutscene is kinda cool, guessing this was made between 7 and 8. The cutscene leads us to Orbonne Monastery, where we get introduced to a whole bunch of weirdly named characters and also a priest named Simon. Ramza notes that he is no longer a knight, just a merc, and we're soon into the tutorial battle.

First thoughts:
-The presentation is just overall cool. Love the vibe.
-Walking in place is amusing.
-There is more to this than I expected- height of terrain is constantly noted for some reason, and you choose the direction you face after combat.
-No direct counterattacks in battle, at least not now. This is helpful to know.
-It's nice that you can attack and then move in the same turn.
-Despite Gafgarion being the one to insist we kill everyone, he spends most of his time casting Cure and it is Agrias who does the attacking.

As we only have to control Ramza it seems impossible to lose this, but Princess Ovelia is kidnapped anyway by... Delita! Gasp! (I'm glad this isn't a big spoiler I knew beforehand then).

Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God.

Flashback a year earlier to Magic City Gariland and we get a bit of background on the current situation (with the text slowing down ridiculously for the words 'little money')- abandoned soldiers with no money or jobs have no loyalty to the crown. Fair enough tbh. Ramza and his pal Delita are here. "We will begin exterminating these traitors. By order of our Master". Yeah that sounds like good guy talk. Onto a fight against some thieves, where we actually get to play a bit more. No control over Delita but he doesn't seem to need our help (And Ramza insists we don't need his!).

Surrender or die in obscurity!

Man this translation is good, typos aside why did they change this? We get through the battle without casualties, I chose the two Chemists on team and three Squires. We do use a couple potions, Hamilton and Rush were in tight spots at one point. I love that one of the moves is literally just throwing stones. Cool that the enemies can level up too. After winning we're off to the world map and I finally get to go through the many... many tutorials. God, I'm not gonna remember all this. Zodiac compatibilities and monster raising on top of everything else? Hopefully it'll come to me just by playing the game. Lmao at someone leaving the party if their Faith gets too high. We do know Ramza is godless heathen thanks to the intro.

Ramza dreams of his dying father, we get a big chunk of lore about the 50 year war at the bar, and apparently female soldiers cost less than male ones to buy. We rescue Algus after another quick battle (I hope there's a bunch of quick ones til I get used to the way things work), and Ramza prioritised saving his life (though he really didn't seem to need much help).

At Igros Castle we get a bit more of a sense of everybody's personalities and Zalbag basically tells us to go east to get info about the kidnapped Marquis and the Death Corps (who seem pretty cool to me at this point tbh). I'm leaving it here for now, I spent like an hour on the tutorials alone. Having fun, just a bit overwhelmed by all the names and text dumps and awful lot of gameplay info to remember. Will try to take it one bit at a time.

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andylt posted...

I see the word 'Tutorial'... right after I click on New Game. Oops!

it's all right the tutorial wouldn't help much anyway!

andylt posted...

guessing this was made between 7 and 8

correct

andylt posted...

As we only have to control Ramza it seems impossible to lose this

It actually is fairly close to impossible to lose the opening battle, even if you're actively sabotaging yourself. People have tried!

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Life is short

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Should I be swapping jobs asap or leaving everyone on Squire for a while to get that JP ability? And how about Chemists? (I got the Gained JP Up on Ramza now)

Also random but how do you pronounce 'Beoulve', is it like Beowulf or what.

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Getting an archer pretty quickly makes the first few fights a lot easier, if I remember correctly

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One thing to keep in mind with jobs: When one character gains JP, the other party members in battle gain a bit of JP from that job as well. You can still gain squire JP for all your characters even if only one character is a squire (it's only something like 1/4th of what that squire would gain, though, so it'll be slower.)

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Saw topic title and thought andymancan was back.

Hope you're doing okay dude.

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I'd recommend you go ahead and switch your jobs. (Make sure you can access the equipment first, though; not much point in making someone an Archer until you can buy a bow for them.)

See, one of FFT's quirks is that, when any of your units gain JP in battle, your other deployed characters also gain a bit of JP for the same job. Units will even receive this "spillover JP" for jobs they can't yet access! So if you keep a single Squire around - doesn't even have to be the same unit all the time - all your other characters will gradually build up Squire JP to spend on Squire abilities. And in the meantime, you can be experimenting with jobs that are significantly more interesting than Squire.
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That said, Gained JP Up should absolutely be the first Squire ability you learn, for everyone.

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The next battle at Sweegy Woods is pretty easy, so you can definitely leave some characters as squires for that one to help get Gained JP Up. After that, though, things start getting a little tougher and you will probably want to make use of the stronger classes like Knight and Wizard.

Ramza, Delita, and Algus all have special slightly-stronger versions of the Squire class, which makes them good candidates to leave as Squires to make use of the party JP mechanic.

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Thanks for the tips, I've mixed up a few jobs and it's making things interesting. Made Ramza a bulkyish Knight, Rush an Archer and Nena a Priest. Keeping the guests as Squires to help fill up the party's jp requirements. Man I am NOT used to these kinds of games having friendly fire on for archer arrows. Very embarrassing <_<

Got through Sweegity Swoogity Woods and reached our first major challenge at the Dorter Slums. Delita and Algus were keen to wander off on their own (I hope I get full control of them at some point) and things went a little south. Probably played it too defensively, I was scared of the Wizards and didn't know how fragile they'd be. Used up 3 Phoenix Downs to keep anyone from going away for good, and didn't manage to collect the two treasure boxes that were around. We won though, and that's what matters.

Algus lets out his aggression (he's pretty interesting so far) against the captive fencer and we find out that Gustav was responsible for the Marquis' kidnapping, not Wiegraf. This means nothing to me as the two are pretty much empty names but sure. Wiegraf led the 'Knights of Death' during the war and clearly enjoyed having a cool group name so started a new one.

I check the character bios (very glad this feature is here) and yeah this Gustav guy seems pretty awful. Surprised at the direct mention of rape in a Final Fantasy game, but Tactics seems to be going for a more gritty lower fantasy vibe than normal (which I like!). Went on for longer than expected today, but I think I'm settling into it more now. Can you grind back and forth around here as long as you want? And does the calendar mean anything really or nah. So far I'm impressed at how unique the system feels compared to the other tactical RPGs I've played.

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yeah you can grind random world map battles if you want

calendar doesn't mean much until later

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Dorter tends to be the first wall for new players, so no shame in struggling with it, especially if you win on your first try.

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Yeah, beating Dorter on your first try is no small feat.

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You can grind if you need to, but be aware it can destroy the challenge of the game if you over do it!

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redrocket posted...

You can grind if you need to, but be aware it can destroy the challenge of the game if you over do it!

Just reminded me of how I rush to get Teleport as fast as possible...

Ah this is giving me the urge to replay too, especially now that I know about the JP scroll glitch... on vacation right now but maybe when I get back home...

I am not a grinder or power leveler. There are many job classes I have never used and I've beaten the game probably 5 times.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Yeah, beating Dorter on your first try is no small feat.

I remember when I was a kid and did the Dorter battle, took me so many tries to take down. Even as an adult, knowing what I'm facing when I'm going in there, I can still get beat the first try or two. Fuck that wizard

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MartinFF7 posted...

Just reminded me of how I rush to get Teleport as fast as possible...

Ah this is giving me the urge to replay too, especially now that I know about the JP scroll glitch... on vacation right now but maybe when I get back home...

I'm on the same boat, i was wanting to replay this before this topic lol.

And the jp scroll glitch is so much fun!

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And iirc, there are actual weather effects in this game too

Dorterit's raining so it boosts bolt

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I love the Geomancer class because it combines the terrain and status effects. It's the only SCC I've ever done.

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Quick q: If I attack with a secondary ability, which JP do I get? For instance, if I have black magic as a secondary on a Chemist and hit an enemy with Bolt, do I get Black Mage JP or Chemist JP?

What we need is food and a place to sleep, not ideas!

Thanks for the tips again, I decided not to go out of my way to grind for now at least. Rough start at Zeklaus Desert but got through it alright in the end, I like how they're introducing new classes each battle. It's hard to wait around for treasure/crystals when Delita and Algus just go marching ahead all the time though. Wiegraf kills Gustav after he explains his (surprisingly) reasonable doubts over his leadership, and we rescue the Marquis. Poor Algus doesn't get to satisfy his bloodlust once again.

We meet Prince Larg back at the castle (I like Algus looking around before kneeling, this game is very good at showing body language given the obvious graphical limitations. Much like VIII!). There's clear ominous intrigue here but it's too soon for things to unravel for Ramza just now.

Animals have no God!

Onto the Thieves' Fort and with each battle the Death Corps seem more and more the scrappy underdog being beset upon by the angry powerful nobles. This time it's White Mages and Thieves, and they've already pretty much accepted their loss. The battle is tough. The White Mages are actually pretty much Black Mages and Bolt is indeed super powerful here in the rain. Thankfully I have my own White Mage with Bolt and the Thieves don't pose too much of a problem.

Lots of funny shenanigans here, the enemies inadvertently Cure me one time and Bolt their own guy another. Nice to know it isn't just me messing things up. The Bolt friendly fire unfortunately robs me of juicy JP and causes Algus (who was charging a shot) to whack my own Hamilton. I think I have things pretty much under control but there's one Squire who refuses to live, every time I Raise him Miluda bashes him back down the very next turn. I lose focus and before I know it am almost completely overrun. I think for sure I'm gonna have to do this again but we manage to scrape out a victory, barely. Ramza is the only one left alive and with low health, but we get there without any permanent fatalities.

Well... do your best, you spoiled-rotten boy.

Miluda teaches Ramza Classism 101 and we cut to the castle, where Teta is taken and Dycedarg is hit. He claims he will not retaliate until Teta is rescued but Algus doesn't believe him. Delita lashes out at Ramza and then gets absolutely (understandably) furious with Algus, who has been increasing his anti-commoner rants more and more lately. The scene here is great, it's the first time Delita and Ramza feel like real long-term friends, and Delita pretty much seems like the de facto protagonist here being the only commoner and such. Intriguing to place Ramza as the lead instead, we shall see how that goes. Ramza kicks out Algus on behalf of his friend, and yeah that's the only way that was going to go. Algus reminds me of a better Fernand from Fire Emblem Echoes, though his obvious own inadequacy issues give him some sympathy and I'm curious how he's gonna come back into the fray.

Ramza and Delita have a cute moment playing the reed flute in front of the sunset, and I'll leave it here for now. I hope Delita doesn't end up going full villain.

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Quick q: If I attack with a secondary ability, which JP do I get? For instance, if I have black magic as a secondary on a Chemist and hit an enemy with Bolt, do I get Black Mage JP or Chemist JP?

You'd get Chemist JP.
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^Thanks!

We're introduced to a Time Mage in the next battle, though they only get one Haste off before we wipe them and the Wizard. This battle's easier than the last few, or maybe things just lined up better for us. I'm now getting used to grinding around at the end of a battle to wait for loot drops and get some JP. Did not realise that the Break skills actually remove your armour for good. That sucks! Anyway Miluda again states the Death Corps' raison d'etre and dies this time. Delita is now fully spiraling into an identity crisis, it has become abundantly clear that we are not acting in the interests of the 'good guys' here, if they exist at all. I particularly enjoy the breaks for dialogue in the middle of battle, I always like that kinda thing.

Another note, I've been enjoying the score so far. It's pleasant background music fitting the tone of each battle, and I've not been bothered by anything repeating.

I'm getting into the story here so not wasting any time we rush right into the next battle against Wiegraf and co. Again there's a scene of Wiegraf reiterating his commitment to the cause to a pessimistic follower. Not much to say, I'm just really liking all this stuff, the grittier/moral grey vibe here is something I'm a sucker for. The battle itself is ok, his crew is pretty weak but Wiegraf himself is incredibly annoying with all his powers. Notably the chocobo doesn't die here. And neither does Wiegraf! He confirms the little glimpse of intrigue we got earlier that Dycedarg was responsible for the Marquis' kidnapping, and Ramza and Delita are again left empty-handed and full of questions.

Things are heating up and I really want to keep going to the next battle here, but I've played for too long again so I really should wait til tomorrow. I'm wondering if I might need to get more party members soon, I'm getting access to more classes but not sure who to switch to what. I have Ramza and Delita both as Knights, Ramza's Faith is good but the health bonuses of the armour are just too good to pass up. I have nobody on Monk/Time Mage/Oracle, are they worth it? They seem too niche to fit a main class right now, though I am always fond of Haste.

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Monks are worth it. You cant go wrong with them. Time mages and oracles require a bit more finesse to maximize their value, but they are valuable classes as well.

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I remember seriously loving Time Mages, not just for the abilities they can learn but some of their support stuff... go for it imo

...I don't remember Oracles at all but there are a lot of classes I would just never use (gotta use them in my next playthrough!)

Edit: I also forgot to mention earlier - Tactics OST is really so good, just absolute bangers all over the place. I never forgot Apoplexy... but yeah, you should pick up the OST too (but maybe not until after you've beaten the game)

I'd hold off a bit on Oracles. One of their perks is that, while most mages can only equip Rods and/or Staves, Oracles can also wield Sticks and Dictionaries... but Chapter 1's stores don't carry either.
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I love Monks. I always give them two hand ability

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Leonhart4 posted...

I love the Geomancer class because it combines the terrain and status effects. It's the only SCC I've ever done.

I don't see the appeal

The damage isn't much and the status effect isn't consistent, id rather whack them with a sword but i may as well have a knight at that point


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I think Time Mages, Monks, and Oracles are all quite good. The time mage moveset is really strong in this game, particularly because Haste can speed up multiple targets on a single cast. In general, it's optimal to run your magic users as Wizards (Black Mage) because that has the highest magic stat, with whichever other type of magic you want as the secondary skill, so actual time spent in the Time Mage Class itself is mainly to learn the abilities (and to unlock the Summoner class.)

Monk is a good offensive class with some useful abilities, especially wave fist, earth slash, chakra, and revive. A good, simple build for them is to use the Knight's Equip Heavy Armor to get around their low durability, which comes entirely from inability to wear hats. The brave stat is important in determining how much damage you do by punching.

Oracle is a versatile class. It can do decent damage just attacking with sticks (which do damage based on magic,) and learns a skill that reduces how much physical damage it takes, so it can even function as a frontline physical attacker to a certain extent. It also has some solid status effects like sleep and petrify, and its life drain attack does exactly one quarter of the enemy's max HP in damage, which can be really handy in some battles.

IMO, the early class that you only want to use to progress to better classes is the thief. You need job levels in thief to get to Dragoon and Ninja, and it has useful skills (especially move +2,) but actually getting much use out of a thief in combat requires a very specific build that you can't really use until much later.

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Heroic Bigpun posted...

I don't see the appeal

The damage isn't much and the status effect isn't consistent, id rather whack them with a sword but i may as well have a knight at that point

Yeah, I think the Geomancer is mainly good for whacking people with swords, which it is a lot better than the Knight at for a large portion of the game. Between learning Attack Up and access to clothes which can be used to stack physical attack, it can wind up dealing a ton of damage. It's probably the optimal class to run Agrias in unless you're giving her Excalibur for this reason.

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You can whack people with swords as a Geomancer, too, if you want to be boring. But you have a lot more range and an afflicted status effect can change the tide of battle.

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Is there any way of getting JP for a class that nobody is using? I only ask because my units had some JP for Time Mage, Monk etc even though nobody has used them at all. Or is there just some one-off JP gift when they're unlocked so you can use them a bit at first.

Mages seem to be the easiest to mess around with as there's no visible downside to having them in secondary instead of primary I think. Unlike Chemist and Knight where they need to be main to get the most usage out of them (unless you have the passives). Like JP is the only thing you're losing there with mages (and I wasn't aware each of them had separate magic stats so that is useful).

Evillordexdeath posted...

Monk is a good offensive class with some useful abilities, especially wave fist, earth slash, chakra, and revive. A good, simple build for them is to use the Knight's Equip Heavy Armor to get around their low durability, which comes entirely from inability to wear hats. The brave stat is important in determining how much damage you do by punching.

I'll try switching one of the Knights to a Monk then when I play today, I like hard hitting physical hits but the lack of armour bothered me. I thought about the Equip skills from a Knight but that would remove the Gained JP Up skill wouldn't it?

Most importantly,
MalcolmMasher posted...

I'd hold off a bit on Oracles. One of their perks is that, while most mages can only equip Rods and/or Staves, Oracles can also wield Sticks and Dictionaries... but Chapter 1's stores don't carry either.

There are dictionaries? As weapons?! I haven't even touched the surface of this game yet, have I.

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Yeah, you get a small pool of JP when you unlock a class just so you can acquire an ability or two to get you started.

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Learn some Stealing abilities. Unless they have Maintenance equipped you can often steal better equipment from random human NPC units than what's available in-store.

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It's fate! Neither should've been here! Should've been flower sellers somewhere!

We arrive to watch Zalbag resolve a standoff with the Death Corps by ordering Algus to kill Teta. Algus obliges without hesitation, and unsurprisingly he is now our enemy for this battle. The atmosphere here is great, all the little dialogues between Ramza/Delita/Algus throughout, the rain and Teta's lifeless body just hanging over the bridge for the duration. The battle goes ok, my mages on the one side clear things up as well as they can, Delita dies early on but thankfully he's not on a timer so there's no rush to revive him. Nena brings him back just in time to fittingly deliver the killing blow on Algus. The Death Corps blow up the Fort with themselves inside, and we reach the end of chapter 1. Good stuff!

We jump forward a year to our prologue, and Ramza has apparently abandoned his family name. We gain a few new crew members and in place of Delita we now have Holy Knight Agrias and Dark Knight Gafgarion. Turns out the two newbies are super OP, with their help we make short work of the Dorter City battle. I test out the soldier deployment thing with a few people I haven't been using, and get a lot of cash as a reward. We stock up on some new fancy gear, change a couple jobs (Trying Monk for Ramza now) and head off to rescue a chocobo in the woods.

I lose the first time, not realising the chocobo would attack and doom itself instead of curing one round. Second time it's no problem, and we now have a monster on our side. It's not mentioned by anyone but Boco is the same name of the chocobo who notably didn't die in the Wiegraf fight, so I'm guessing it's the same one. Hopefully this is relevant!

Off to a very cool looking waterfall battle, where we catch up with Delita and discover the truth. Well, some form of the truth probably. Gafgarion betrays us (if you want to call it that) and I suddenly realise why the game gave us such an OP party member for a couple battles. To his credit, Gafgarion does abide by his own moral code here, criticising the hypocrisy of people pledging blind loyalty to those of royal blood while not caring about the massacred commoners. There's some good lines throughout this battle, some nice Delita/Ramza moments, and the battle itself is very fun.

What are you? Ally or enemy?
Human, just like you!

The princess hides in a corner and casts protection spells on herself, there is no danger of losing her here. We eventually get Gafgarion trapped on the bridge, with Ramza right in front of him using his Break tricks to weaken him and stop his OP attack+heal combo, our resident Time Mage using Haste/Slow as appropriate and Delita wandering across the waterfalls with his new Holy Knight class massacring the guards. Gafgarion manages to escape, and Delita lets us keep Ovelia 'for now', says something cryptic about Teta saving him then leaves. I'm very much enjoying the Delita/Ramza relationship.

In place of Gafgarion we now have Princess Ovelia on our team, who has... a crapton of JP in 'Princess' and seemingly nothing useful to spend them on. Weird. (Another q: what is the difference between 'Stop' and 'Don't Move'?) There's a couple new classes unlocked- Geomancer and Lancer (also unlocked Summoner earlier) but I've barely got a grasp on the current ones! I leave it here for now.

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