looking at his stats Ixion makes too much sense they are even closely related being commonly fused
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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Yessss, it's finally time to talk about the core mechanic that only unlocks, what, five hours into the game? More?
First of all, note that the benefits of leveling up with an esper apply precisely when you level up. You can equip Celes with Ramuh (she needs offensive spells), wait until her "xp until next level" gets low enough, equip her with Cait Sith and get your magic point, even though she'd only spent one fight with Cait Sith and thirty with Ramuh. Juggling espers between characters to maximize stat gains is an essential tactic and one of many irritations this mechanic brings.
It also does not in any way limit your ability to learn magic, as that is done through the AP system. You can master all spells on everyone in Veldt without gaining a single level if you want and have enough time.
Speaking more broadly, espers are a massive change to character progression in the series that offers almost unprecendented customization options. In a way, they can be seen as an iteration of FFII training system, tempered with AP system from FFV. Espers allow you to turn any character into what you want them to be. Want to make Sabin an extra punchy white mage? You can. Want to make Locke the beefiest tank to ever walk the earth? You can. Sky's the limit, gazing down on you and despairing.
However, it's also clearly a product of old school game design that have not yet heard of being player-friendly.
Firstly, yeah, your early levels are wasted, and if you did the "grind on the raft" trick as some have described, well, you'd be well and truly fucked.
Now, barring extreme cases of power grinding, it doesn't really matter. Gaining ~30 points in your main attack stat (Magic or Strength, depending on whether a given character uses magic/magic-based special commands like most of Blitz or regular attack/physical-based special commands like Tools, other stats are not anywhere near as useful), which can be done fairly easily at least on your main party without much grinding is enough to turn any character into a powerhouse. Magic characters especially start brushing against 9,999 damage limit at this point. The level cap is also far higher than what's required to beat the game, so even if you waste a dozen levels, you can just park yourself somewhere with meaty enemies and grind for an hour to make up for it.
But man, that FOMO hits like a sudden realization that the train you've just managed to escape is going to carry your wife and son into the afterlife, leaving you live the rest of your life alone.
Also, when characters leave the party and return later, they level up to the average level of your party (don't remember if it's currently selected party specifically or all available characters) unless their level was already higher. Naturally, they don't get any esper benefits. The optimized play includes knowledge when specific characters leave and for how long, and then power grinding them to the point they gain zero levels on return. Naturally, it's a very unnatural way to play, but something you may be tempted to do thanks to our friend FOMO.
More subjectively, I do take an issue with everyone becoming a mage. The game goes out of its way to give every character a unique command with bespoke mechanics, but also everyone is going to be a support mage at least because it's too useful not to do, and for some characters it makes sense to abandon their commands entirely in favor of magic. Celes and Terra also suffer because their big thing is learning spells on level up... Except they aren't going to because espers are faster. I literally forgot that Terra can even do it when she suddenly gained Dispel at the end of a battle and I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out why.
Finally, in the very "me problem" corner, I tend to forget that summoning espers is a thing. You can't set it on auto because it can only be done once per battle, so it's not very useful during random fights, and to select a summon you need to scroll up the magic menu even though you're on the first row, so it tends to slip my mind that it's something that can be done.
So, all in all, cool idea, a great leap forward in game design, but very, very unrefined. Still, you get to snort old man Ramuh, so everything is worth it in the end.
- Pronouns
- He
Good boys deserve good food.
- Location
- Spain
- Location
- Canada
I never paid too much attention to the mechanics when I played, but after that explanation I've lost a fair bit of respect for the game. Wow that's a lot terrible play that the game mechanically encourages.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
It's not as bad on practice as it looks on paper, due to a few plot developments and the actual requirements to beat the game softening the hit. When we say just trucking on and not going out of your way to minmax things isn't a dealbreaker, we mean it. Hell, you can take the mechanics seriously without limiting your leveling or making use of grinding strategies, and you'd be good.
It would be great if not for espers!
It's an anti-grinding mechanic! It's here for your convenience! It is convenient (if not as convenient as modern games' approach of "everyone just always levels up at the same time, even if they're busy calibrating")! It's better than, say, Baldur's Gate, where leaving a character at the inn for a couple of dungeons makes them worthless!
But the cost is too high to bear.
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, the levelling up stuff is just... who thought this was a good idea? Why not just divorce stat gains and magic progression, maybe give you a spread of 'stat gems' at the very beginning of the game you can assign to people so you can choose what their stats will do on level up, if you absolutely have to keep the system in some form?
Why, for the love of fuck, would you gate the character progression mechanics behind like 6 hours of gameplay? It's just such confusingly bad game design. I mean, a lot of FF stuff is like that, but still. Makes you realise that impostor syndrome is all bunk, really; just fucking go for it, no-one else really seems to know what the fuck they're doing either.
Why, for the love of fuck, would you gate the character progression mechanics behind like 6 hours of gameplay? It's just such confusingly bad game design. I mean, a lot of FF stuff is like that, but still. Makes you realise that impostor syndrome is all bunk, really; just fucking go for it, no-one else really seems to know what the fuck they're doing either.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've always played focusing solely on teaching everybody all magic rather than optimizing stat boosts, and it makes things harder, but not unreasonably so. The stat boosts are a bonus as much or more than a necessity.
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm gonna be real, my personal experience of FF6 is that it's one of the easiest FF games, and the stat stuff didn't ever matter that much.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
A thing on Magic AP, the amount you get per battle is tied to the enemy formation, not the number of enemies you fight.
For example in the Phantom Forest there's a random encounter with 3 Ghosts and another one with only 1. The 3x Ghost formation gives 1 AP, while the 1x Ghost formation for some reason gives 3 AP.
EXP gain is instead on a per-enemy basis, so if you want to avoid leveling up finding a formation with high AP but little EXP is ideal.
BTW, the 1x Ghost formation in the Phantom Forest? Best AP gain for this stage of the game, and little EXP to boot.
For example in the Phantom Forest there's a random encounter with 3 Ghosts and another one with only 1. The 3x Ghost formation gives 1 AP, while the 1x Ghost formation for some reason gives 3 AP.
EXP gain is instead on a per-enemy basis, so if you want to avoid leveling up finding a formation with high AP but little EXP is ideal.
BTW, the 1x Ghost formation in the Phantom Forest? Best AP gain for this stage of the game, and little EXP to boot.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I loathe the magicite system. Say what you will about Kefka vs Sephiroth, I'll take materia any day.
Locke and Rachel's backstory borders on comedy fanfic. "yeah she remembered who you are just before she got her head caved in" is something I expect from a Twisted Metal ending.
I like Zozo. It's funny how a town of exiled poors managed to grow up to become a bustling borough full of high-rises with some of the most modern architecture seen to date. And yes, be sure to get the chainsaw before you leave.
...
Although, looking at it now, I wonder if maybe one day when the war with the Empire is over and everything is settled, once magic returns to the world...maybe people will give Zozo a second look, see the city's unquenchable spirit and irrepressible joie de vivre behind the grime and the crime, and flock there, bringing all manner of arts and technology, and eventually even magical studies with them, building the famous skyscrapers of Zozo even higher and transforming it into a veritable beacon of culture.
Locke and Rachel's backstory borders on comedy fanfic. "yeah she remembered who you are just before she got her head caved in" is something I expect from a Twisted Metal ending.
I like Zozo. It's funny how a town of exiled poors managed to grow up to become a bustling borough full of high-rises with some of the most modern architecture seen to date. And yes, be sure to get the chainsaw before you leave.
...
Although, looking at it now, I wonder if maybe one day when the war with the Empire is over and everything is settled, once magic returns to the world...maybe people will give Zozo a second look, see the city's unquenchable spirit and irrepressible joie de vivre behind the grime and the crime, and flock there, bringing all manner of arts and technology, and eventually even magical studies with them, building the famous skyscrapers of Zozo even higher and transforming it into a veritable beacon of culture.
Esper stat increases only matter for freaky obsessives and minmaxers, though I repeat myself. The most important stat, by far, is your level.
It bears mentioning: FF6 is not hard. If you play through the game without running from things and are reasonably thorough in exploring you'll encounter more than enough enemies to, if not breeze through the final dungeon, at least handle things with reasonable ease.
Like, if you really want to turn someone into a god of war for the hell of it you can, but it's really not necessary in the slightest to complete the game.
I mean, unless the pixel remaster has the bonus content. It might be important for that; I wouldn't know, I only played the SNES version.
In any case, don't stress out about optimal esper placement unless that's the sort of puzzle you appreciate.
It bears mentioning: FF6 is not hard. If you play through the game without running from things and are reasonably thorough in exploring you'll encounter more than enough enemies to, if not breeze through the final dungeon, at least handle things with reasonable ease.
Like, if you really want to turn someone into a god of war for the hell of it you can, but it's really not necessary in the slightest to complete the game.
I mean, unless the pixel remaster has the bonus content. It might be important for that; I wouldn't know, I only played the SNES version.
In any case, don't stress out about optimal esper placement unless that's the sort of puzzle you appreciate.
Mister Bad Guy
Mr Mercury to friends
- Location
- Bay Area
Brave New World, a fairly famous mod of Final Fantasy VI, has one of its major changes being that it redesigns how espers work, and I'd say for the better. It makes the following changes:
- Every character has a specific list of espers they can equip, with some having as few as two or three. This means that every character also has a specific spell list they can't go beyond, meaning that, for instance, some characters learn mostly offense, some learn mostly support, some learn healing, and some learn a little of everything (Terra and Celes, unsurprisingly).
- The amount of stats you gain from having an esper equipped has a finite cap of 25 that levels separately from your XP, which applies to all Esper stat gains a character has gotten (so, for instance, you can have Celes level up 12 times in Ramuh, 6 times in Siren, and 7 times in Shiva). This means that there's no reason to not level up in the early game. Also, if you don't like a character's build, you can pay money to have their stat gains reset.
It really does feel like the natural next step in that system, and it's one of the big reasons to play that mod (BUT ONLY WITH AN ALTERNATE TRANSLATION PATCH).
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- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
So I wanted to say this before you reached Zozo, but Zozo is bastard city. Not because it's poor (though Squeenix pulling this is kind of a dick move/capitalist propaganda), but because the enemies there are kind of a jump up in difficulty from the rest of the world thus far. Like enemies who'd steal your cash and you had to take them down before they ran away with it, etc...
Ooooohhhh... yes, please do. It's Edgar's best tool, and has a random chance of inflicting instant death (though admittedly, that makes it a poor choice against undead and bosses) or massive damage otherwise.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Zozo am not operate by Bizarro world logic.
Neat, I don't think I've seen anyone interpret the scene this way before! I think it makes a lot more sense though if you interpret the voice calling Sabin's name being Edgar, who just goes unnamed because he's calling from offscreen. That connects to the next scene where Edgar has caught up to Sabin, who was running away from the business with his father and so Sabin is the one who misses his last words. This fits with him generally being the most outwardly emotional, as you discussed.
By the way, the music for this section of the brothers settling the issue of succession with a coin toss is Coin of Fate. We're well into the point of the game where Uematsu's focus on Leitmotif is starting to pay off (the other recent example is during the Narshe fight, where Protect the Espers! quotes the same melodic idea in its B section that Terra's Theme and Omen part 3 use), and here the first few chords recontextualize the first few chords of the main Edgar & Sabin theme (which does enough to change the mood that it's easy to miss that it is using their theme), while most of it borrows more heavily from its B section.
Our white knight even has a princess!
Based.
Slam Shuffle was always a favorite of mine from the soundtrack. The Pixel Remaster version also does more of the second loop variations that I've been loving so much about their work on this by giving the melody to solo saxophone the second time through. It does so much work to change up the listening experience while still doing the same 'tune endlessly loops' thing that's necessary in a game soundtrack.
This is definitely a puzzle, and the reward is pretty good so you'll want to solve it. Someone already posted a spoiler solution for you
Again, interesting interpretation of the dialogue, but my read of it is more that "Espers come in a variety of shapes", rather than being shapeshifters. So, you've got the monster thing frozen in Narshe, and Ramuh being a weird old man are both espers despite wildly different morphology, but Ramuh couldn't change himself into a copy of the Narshe ice cube. So, Ramuh lucked out in that he looked enough like a human to hide in plain sight.
Okay, so as much as I think the rest of the thread needs to chill with the complete infodumps on how optimization is required and exactly how to do it (*glares*), it is true that not all the stat boosts are created equally. The flat boosts to stats work more or less as advertised, though what's not intuitive is that Stamina doesn't actually just boost your defense like you'd expect. It controls the HP rate of Regen, poison, sap, and that sort of thing. The percentage boost to hp though, is an increase to what you would normally gain on level up. So, you level up and would normally get 50 more hp, you get 55 instead with Siren equipped.
It's... not very good, unfortunately. Definitely balance woes to be had with a new system this ambitious. But like others in the thread have stressed, optimizing your stat gains is really not required to engage with the game.
The how of juggling espers for stat gains is correct, but it is completely wrong to call it essential.
No. Absolutely not. "Well and truly fucked" is not even hyperbole it's so wrong. Pretending like you wouldn't just walk over the entire game with a level 99 character. Ridiculous.
FFVI is not without its difficulty spikes (as the section on the raft demonstrates, and there are a few more on the horizon) but playing 'normally' is entirely enough to surmount them.
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Now that we've discussed the most important late mechanic, it's time for less important stuff, like plot, themes and other shit.
Fun fact: you can rest for free at the back of the relic shop here, which is also close to the soldier's home.
It's kiiiinda useful early game, but quickly becomes obsolete. The trick is to just have everyone learn Cure. Characters with powerful unique commands like Edgar and Sabin would rarely use magic in combat, but they're still fully capable of casting curatives outside of battle, preserving MP of your main mages. This basically eliminates health management as a concern for the rest of the game.
Though it's good to see he still finds work in the Dark Souls franchise, he-he-he.
Locke, apparently. ~OH DESIIIIIRE!~
Watch out for him starting a demonic roulette.
In any case, the treatment of female characters is probably something you want to keep an eye at going forward. There is kind of a lot of incidents even now that are kinda skeevy but forgivable in isolation, but get weird in aggregate.
It's interesting how much FFVI does class stuff. The previous richest guy in town was a filthy collaborator as well. IDK if it's a coherent theme given the presentation of Zozo, but an effort to sharpen our inner guillotines was made.
I think the game generally defaults to the top character being the main speaker. It's more obvious in some scenes than in others, with the top character sometimes walking ahead of the rest of the party and monologuing. And yes, you can select Gau as that character, and he gets to speak perfect English and give a history lesson.
Soooo, espers are Undertale monsters who imprisoned themselves. Noted.
So, the basic trick is that you mostly only care about Strength and Magic, with the other stats being way less important. Currently you only can increase Magic, so just give Cait Sith to whoever's approaching level up. Everyone can benefit from a bit of Magic. If two or more characters are close to leveling up, prioritize Celes, Gau and Sabin, roughly in that order (that is, if you want to invest in Gau rather than just spam Stray Cat, which is purely physical), and give others Stamina or HP. Once the character levels up, switch esper to whichever one teaches spells you want that character to learn. Everyone benefits from white magic, Celes wants offensive stuff, support is situationally useful.
Fun fact: you can rest for free at the back of the relic shop here, which is also close to the soldier's home.
It's kiiiinda useful early game, but quickly becomes obsolete. The trick is to just have everyone learn Cure. Characters with powerful unique commands like Edgar and Sabin would rarely use magic in combat, but they're still fully capable of casting curatives outside of battle, preserving MP of your main mages. This basically eliminates health management as a concern for the rest of the game.
Though it's good to see he still finds work in the Dark Souls franchise, he-he-he.
Locke, apparently. ~OH DESIIIIIRE!~
Watch out for him starting a demonic roulette.
In any case, the treatment of female characters is probably something you want to keep an eye at going forward. There is kind of a lot of incidents even now that are kinda skeevy but forgivable in isolation, but get weird in aggregate.
It's interesting how much FFVI does class stuff. The previous richest guy in town was a filthy collaborator as well. IDK if it's a coherent theme given the presentation of Zozo, but an effort to sharpen our inner guillotines was made.
I think the game generally defaults to the top character being the main speaker. It's more obvious in some scenes than in others, with the top character sometimes walking ahead of the rest of the party and monologuing. And yes, you can select Gau as that character, and he gets to speak perfect English and give a history lesson.
Soooo, espers are Undertale monsters who imprisoned themselves. Noted.
So, the basic trick is that you mostly only care about Strength and Magic, with the other stats being way less important. Currently you only can increase Magic, so just give Cait Sith to whoever's approaching level up. Everyone can benefit from a bit of Magic. If two or more characters are close to leveling up, prioritize Celes, Gau and Sabin, roughly in that order (that is, if you want to invest in Gau rather than just spam Stray Cat, which is purely physical), and give others Stamina or HP. Once the character levels up, switch esper to whichever one teaches spells you want that character to learn. Everyone benefits from white magic, Celes wants offensive stuff, support is situationally useful.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
Now that I think about it, we're all operating on SNES conventions, but do we know if they fixed or reworked stats for the PR?
While I vibe with wanting to change and/or rebalance things, I'm not sure these are the types of modifications that feel like fit with what the game intended (whether it succeeded or not)
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Speak for yourself, I first played FFVI on a GameBoy Advance and definitely not an emulator nosireebob.
By "well and truly fucked" I meant "you'll miss out on half the benefits of leveling up, and that would make you very sad".
Like, yeah, ultimately all of this stuff doesn't really matter that much. FFVI is fairly easy, and if you're having trouble with some fights, gaining a couple of levels is usually enough to make them go away. The game allows you to fuck yourself over, but is also forgiving enough that you should be able to finish it basically no matter what you do, provided you have tolerance for grinding.
It just feels bad. FOMO is not a rational concern, but it's real and out to get you.
As far as Stat gains being a requirement... the first time I ever beat the game I don't think I had a single level 60 character.
... granted I had every character in my prime four fully kitted out with every magic I could learn them from an esper but that's hardly the same thing.
... granted I had every character in my prime four fully kitted out with every magic I could learn them from an esper but that's hardly the same thing.
I had characters in early 50s, and I was clearly overleveled.
I did the Cursed Shield in Dino Forest. Also, I didn't know about Cursed Shield and Gogo. Anyway, I had five Celestriads once all was said and done.
I think late 30s/early 40s is the "normal" endgame level for the main party.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
I must say, as a city Zozo is only so-so.