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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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MiskWisk said:
But yeah, the Junon section drags hard thanks to the minigames. They're not hard, but honestly that makes them kind of worse in my eyes. They're so dull they're not even touched on ever again. It's made even worse on the PC version for the next one, because it uses the name of the button and not what it's keybind is.
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Back in the days of early 2000s (and late 90s) Internet, webcomics were proliferating everywhere.

The ones which had anything to do with RPG stories, even tangentially, all made some reference or poking fun at the minigames around Junon in FFVII. It was as recognizable as "spiky-haired protagonist".

Personally it was the dolphin minigame for me that made me realize how bad FFVII was with its minigames. There were lots of them, they had little to no narrative reason to exist, they were non-optional, and they all required you to do something that never comes up again, so you can't use the skill you learned in this minigame on any others.

The dolphin minigame wasn't the worst of them, but more of the proverbial last straw.
 
McFluffles said:
It's Final Fantasy, the moon is probably an ancient superprison for seven evil dragon gods or something anyways. As good a reason as any to shoot it.
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Shinra being Shinra, they'd only manage to release it/them by shooting the Moon.

They'd also probably have some plan for after killing the dragon about extracting "the immense reserves of Mako it must have!"
 
Omicron said:
Also despite their monk-ish appearance, the locals apparently aren't fighters, and instead have hired soldiers to fight off Shinra for them. Interesting; I wonder where they're recruiting them from? Wutai?
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Texas.

Omicron said:
There is an honestly kinda funny skit at the end where the TV Producer is going "I am going to be fired! Who's that soldier who fucked this up for me, send him a bomb or something," and that's why our reward for this bit is… A grenade, a consumable item that inflicts damage. It's a funny gag, but also, fuck you, game.
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Making Shinra look foolish can only be a good thing, so by failing you have succeeded in the true objective.

Omicron said:
Enough. That's it. I'm taking a break. There's a save point nearby; I use it and I quit. Junon Harbour will find its conclusion some other day.
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Soooo, that's where Umineko comes in, I take it.
 
For Fort Condor, I am not sure to remember exactly right, but if the enemies reach the top, your usual team will go out and you can kill them.

So, just put one soldier (because you probably need to put at least one), find the way to accelerate the thing and just smash the enemies when they arrive. I think you only have to do one fight in this case.

There is probably one downside to do it like this (probably less items to win), but it makes the thing easier to deal with. And you still will have the final prize.
 
Something that sticks out to me (a ridiculous person) is that Omi never changed the text box color.
 
McFluffles said:
Unfortunately for Avalanche, their only gunner does not have particularly good long range accuracy considering Barret has some kind of minigun strapped to his arm.

Oh and I guess nobody in the current party is proficient with that Peacemaker you picked up earlier.
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What makes it worse is, if you buy Barrett's next weapon. "Atomic Scissors" is exactly what it says on the tin. Melee only. So the only option would be Yuffie's frisbee of death.
 
Corti said:
For Fort Condor, I am not sure to remember exactly right, but if the enemies reach the top, your usual team will go out and you can kill them.

So, just put one soldier (because you probably need to put at least one), find the way to accelerate the thing and just smash the enemies when they arrive. I think you only have to do one fight in this case.

There is probably one downside to do it like this (probably less items to win), but it makes the thing easier to deal with. And you still will have the final prize.
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The downside of this is that you gain no rewards and basically completely wasted your time. You need to engage with the RTS bullshit and win that way in order to get rewards and advance in Battle Level which unlocks further rewards. Fortunately none of the rewards are wholly unique so Omi can just ignore it.
 
Gun Jam said:
Why can't the old man do the CPR, if he knows how to and Cloud don't?
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Because this is a 90s game and so 'tee hee he's kissing a girl' is the entire and only motivation for this scene.

Ignore that Cloud is like 21 and the girl is, uh... 13. Yeah, not problematic if it was just 'Cloud's the only one who actually knows CPR, as the literal only trained soldier there and this was covered in Basic', but as part of the whole 'teehee' thing it's, uh, deeply uncomfortable.
 
There have been minigames before this section, there will be minigames later. But this is peak minigames, and doing it all on the pc port was hell for me.

That goddamn parade minigame is still stuck to my brain like a psychic limpet. I can barely ever think of the game itself at all without thinking of RUFUS! NEW PRESIDENT OF SHINRA! RUFUS!
 
This is where everything starts being new to me beyond broad outline; my game froze at the CPR minigame - entered the minigame, music stopped and no button did anything.

Cloud: "No. I am not participating in this CPR means kissing gag on a little girl. I quit."
 
Ok, so Fort Condor has a semi-cheese strategy that takes most of the pain (and cost) out of the equation. The game never tells you this, but you don't need to defeat all enemies, only all enemies on-screen. Normally this doesn't change much as you can only spawn your troops in the top half of the map, but another poorly explained feature is that you can spawn units up to and slightly below your lowest unit.

This allows you to spawn a single unit at the middle line, start the minigame, then spawn units lower and lower until you can build at the bottom of the map. You can then build counter units to quickly mop up the first few spawns and win almost immediately.

The dolphin minigame also has a bit of a cheese method too. Just jump twice without moving, and you'll make it.
 
Omicron said:
This sequence is borderline incomprehensible. Checking the Retranslation mod, it scans a lot better; I have no idea where the original translator pulled "Quietly!" or the soldier screaming "Aaaah!" from. I have also no idea what they're showing me beyond 'playing a walk-in-place cycle animation"; the officer turns to me and tells me to "Keep in step with the soldier next to you and march smoothly," then asks me if I "got it," and I can answer yes and no, but, like… He didn't explain anything. If there is a mechanic I was supposed to learn there, I don't know what it is and cannot execute it.
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You say that but The Reunion subtly ruins this entire disguise parade sequence by "bugfixing" and making the first parade sequence basically impossible to get right. My completionist urge made me turn it off for a few minutes (save games are completely compatible across mods) so I could actually get the good reward.

Omicron said:
Soldier: "Just sneak into the back of the line when you see an opening."
Officer: "Now listen up! This parade's gonna be broadcast live on Shinra TV around the world!"
Officer: "If you look bad, the whole Junon army will look bad. Remember that and don't screw up!"
Officer: "OK! Jump in when I give you the sign! Just sneak in from the back! Don't mess up the row!"
Officer: "And no matter what you do, don't try to go in from the front!"

…this is where I gave up.

The minigame here is that we must sneak into the parade as it advances. Every formation has three rows, and there is a hole in the third row. We have to get there and start marching. The "Live TV Ratings" is our score bar for how well we're doing. Every time we mess up, Cloud is pulled back to the officer, who tells him "Don't play around!," the score gets a malus, and we have to try again.

And again.

And again.

There is no escape clause. There is no release. There is no final failure. At no point does the officer go "ah well that sucked but parade's over, let's move on with the plot." Even after a dozen attempts, as the score has ticked all the way down to 00%, I still have to keep trying.

I don't even know what I'm doing wrong, because I don't know what 'doing it right' even looks like. The game has given me no legible instructions. I just keep running into the line, walking at the line, sneaking up from the back, rushing in from the side, and nothing works. It's just failure, after failure, after failure, and the game will not release me even as its fucking score counter is judging me for failing to comply with instructions it did not fucking give.

You don't get to tell me I failed your arbitrary bullshit minigame when you designed the game wrong.
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Yeah, see, in the unmodded game there's a bug that made it doable, involving the fact that, if I remember correctly, you walk in front of the last row to get to your spot, then spam the rifle twirl at a consistent pace to make the rating shoot up even though the animation isn't being done right.

It's a bug contrary to everything the game tells you to do, but it's in the category of functional bugs that made the sequence actually work because it turns out the minigame isn't tuned to work and be winnable as described if you disable it.

Omicron said:
Rufus: "Stop that stupid horse laugh. Things are different from when Father was in charge."
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My one translation complaint to bring up with Reunion this update! They got rid of the horse laugh line! It's such a funny almost-Woolseyism at making you imagine how weird Heidegger's laugh must be without voice acting and they got rid of it because he just calls it "weird" in Japanese!

Omicron said:
But the game was explaining this incredibly badly. The fund to which I initially contributed was the fund the game uses when handling battles on its own, while I'm not there to directly do the RTS minigame. It's a "health bar" of money that gets depleted during assaults I'm not there for. When I hired soldiers for the awful RTS minigame, I wasn't paying out of that vast 18k supply. I was paying out of pocket with my own money. On top of also having given them 3k for the war fund.

Which means Fort Condor just drained my coffers entirely. I checked my saving history; I walked in with 9,200 gil, I walked out with 1,100.
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Is now a bad time to tell you you've missed two Fort Condor encounters already and their money HP is already going down?

If you want to do all the Fort Condor battles you have to do another one after the Bottomswell fight but before talking to Priscilla to get the Shiva Materia, then another one after getting the whistle but before using the dolphin to jump up.

This, by the way, involves having to run back across the continent to Fort Condor with Cloud alone.

The fucking Bird is always under attack at the most inconvenient times, and I don't think it's a big spoiler violation to warn you that "multiple attacks in the middle of the same town/story beat" is something that will happen again. The Bird demands your money.

Now, I've been doing enough grinding that I can handle this. It's inconvenient and draining... but I have enough money.

You, on the other hand, may be fucked by this, and you have my sympathies.

Of course, there are other ways of dealing with the unfair and tedious gil demands of Fort Condor...

But they are not techniques the Jedi would teach you a by-the-books-LPer would use.

 
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Geckonator said:
If you want to do all the Fort Condor battles you have to do another one after the Bottomswell fight but before talking to Priscilla to get the Shiva Materia, then another one after getting the whistle but before using the dolphin to jump up.
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...why. No really why would they do that. It doesn't even make sense, there's two attacks in the span of, what, 5 minutes?
 
Oof, sorry Omi. I don't blame you though. Junon is absolutely a huge gameplay misfire, made worse by the translation shitting itself into an extra incomprehensible mess. Please, take all the time you want before wading back into the minigame swamp; I have Armored Core 6 to keep me warm in the meantime.
 
I'm honestly convinced that the FF developers just sort of stumble backwards into the good bits of their games, most of the time.
 
BLARGHER said:
Ok, so Fort Condor has a semi-cheese strategy that takes most of the pain (and cost) out of the equation. The game never tells you this, but you don't need to defeat all enemies, only all enemies on-screen. Normally this doesn't change much as you can only spawn your troops in the top half of the map, but another poorly explained feature is that you can spawn units up to and slightly below your lowest unit.

This allows you to spawn a single unit at the middle line, start the minigame, then spawn units lower and lower until you can build at the bottom of the map. You can then build counter units to quickly mop up the first few spawns and win almost immediately.
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Yes, I was wondering why so much hate for this minigame when I don't remember it being particularly difficult or frustrating. I think I was doing this. Just rush to the bottom and place the right units.
 
There is absolutely no point to playing the Fort Condor minigames after the first (for Red's weapon, as mentioned) until the last one becomes available. It's a waste of time and money.

However, if it helps, I have something to comment on this:
Omicron said:
They have Hardedge, that sword we could have stolen from the Third Class SOLDIERs
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You can get by without buying any of these weapons, and focusing only on the materia; you have one minigame left in Junon (the easiest of the bunch, I think) where you can get a better sword than Hardedge if you do it perfectly, the hairpin for Red from Fort Condor (Magic Comb) should be better than what you can buy in Junon, the third party member should be able to get by with just casting, and there's really no battle difficult enough you must have the attack upgrade between the current location and the next shop, which will also sell all of the Junon weapons again - they really didn't expect the player to be able to buy all of the stuff at Junon upon arrival, clearly.
 
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