Well yeah, of course it won't be a memory, you used too many GFs in your playthrough. By this time next year you'll have forgotten the whole thing.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
I brought it up in the spoiler thread, that Cid's whispered "advice" to Squall during the SeeD graduation ceremony could be reinterpreted in light of the time loop.
Saying "Finally, a gunblade specialist" goes from a vague generic liking of gunblade users, into a sort of relieved satisfaction: the mysterious boy who told his wife to start up SeeD had a gunblade, and now SeeD has a gunblade specialist.
Which gets hilariously uncomfortable when we consider the gunblade specialists currently training to be SeeD: one weird brooding loner obsessed with his furry OC, and one known disciplinary problem. These are the only options for the boy who started this whole SeeD time loop.
And both of them are children Cid personally knew from the orphanage. In fact, 3/4 of the current graduating class were from that orphanage, and another one has been part of his faculty for the past few years. And not once did any of them mention their time in the orphanage.
Saying "Finally, a gunblade specialist" goes from a vague generic liking of gunblade users, into a sort of relieved satisfaction: the mysterious boy who told his wife to start up SeeD had a gunblade, and now SeeD has a gunblade specialist.
Which gets hilariously uncomfortable when we consider the gunblade specialists currently training to be SeeD: one weird brooding loner obsessed with his furry OC, and one known disciplinary problem. These are the only options for the boy who started this whole SeeD time loop.
And both of them are children Cid personally knew from the orphanage. In fact, 3/4 of the current graduating class were from that orphanage, and another one has been part of his faculty for the past few years. And not once did any of them mention their time in the orphanage.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Final Fantasy VIII retelling but it's a psychological horror movie from Cid and Irvine's perspective
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Has to be Cid's perspective, because after years of everyone he knows not recognizing or remembering him, and his growing terror that maybe it's himself who has the memory issues, he finally meets one person who remembers.
And the very first thing that one person does, upon reaching Balamb Garden for the first time, is use the school bulletin board as a dating app.
The crime of raising child soldier mercenaries was just a smokescreen for the much more mundane crime of being a shitty, inattentive father figure.
*WARNING!*
*AN INCOHERENT RAMBLE IS APPROACHING FAST!*
I'll spring on this to echo the idea that Ultimecia desperately needed to lean into the the Sephiroth school of pettiness and spend more energy being a time-hater instead.
And, y'know, the entire bit about Adel broadcasting her rage down from her prison in space with such intensity that it warps all wireless communication is such a great bit of science fantasy horror* , but there's a contrarian part of me that whispers "they have the infrastructure to build trains and warbots and giant drill-prisons, but not to run fiber-optic cable, or even just some CAT-6A?" Settings with limited / inconsistent means of mass communications are so interesting to me; it's one of my favorite things about something like BattleTech, where so much of the plot hinges on if the Space Wizard ISP lets your BBS message get through. So the longer I sit and think about it, the more disappointed that they don't *do* anything with it beyond the first few hours, or further explore Ultimecia essentially being a malignant time ghost. Maybe it's just me being a horror/thriller fan and finding the surreal and outright spooky bits of 7 to be so memorable and thus wishing they'd bring back more of that energy, but idk, it's such a cool setting element that's bacically just reduced down to a mere logistics issue by the end of the game.
EDIT: And that's not to say I dislike the science fantasy fairytale romance vibe it's aiming for, because that's really really cool. Just that you can't introduce "eldritch spacetime horror floating in stasis above the planet broadcasting her eternal hatred" and not make me wish we had more than a whiff of it, especially in such a long game.
What I'm saying is that FF8 was desperately trying to be a CLAMP/Sunrise anime, when it should have also been ripping off Serial Experiments Lain or Boogiepop Phantom.
*hence why they broadly reused the concept in That One Part of FFXIV, lol
Last edited:
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Anyway I told myself I would take more time off but my hand slipped and I accidentally wrote a 10k OP on Final Fantasy Tactics so there's that
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Tactics is one of the Final Fantasy games I know the least about, up there with FFIII before your review of it, so this should be interesting. I think I might have been spoiled on the ending and that's about it.
Last edited:
Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 1.A: Intro & Gariland
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Final Fantasy Tactics
I. Ancient History
It's time to take a slight détour.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a 1997 tactical role-playing game released by Square on the PlayStation. It post-dates Final Fantasy VII by a few months, and predates VIII by a little over a year, which means we are doing a slight leap backwards in time, to the time between VII and VIII, and a different kind of Final Fantasy.
It has been, say it with me now, "cited as one of the greatest video games of all time."
Final Fantasy Tactics is one of these games I know incredibly little about in terms of what the game is about, but whose cultural presence is impossible to ignore. Multiple people have told me that it was one of their favorite games of all time, or how excited they were to see me play it (which is still wild to me, that people really want to see me muse aloud about these games for months on end). There have been several debates about which version of the game I should play in this very thread. It is a massive cultural artifact, and yet I know nearly nothing about its story or its universe, or even its mechanics…
…sort of.
In 2003, Square released Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for Nintendo's GameBoy Advance console. The GBA was my constant companion for my early teenage years, and I played the shit out of FFTA. 2003 is in a bit of an odd place in FF history; coming off the golden age of nearly yearly widely acclaimed releases, it's in the gap between FF11 (2001) and FFX12 (2006), it's the year of the Square-Enix merger, the period in which the FF7 Compilation began to be released. With its development slightly predating the merger, and released a mere month before Final Fantasy X-2, Tactics Advance was the Final Fantasy series' first direct spin-off, though a spin-off of a spin-off rather than a mainline entry. Tactics Advance is a fascinating artifact of the 00s, combining a depth of gameplay that can support a hundred hours of play for play's own sake with a story that is, let's say, controversial. (Anecdotally, when I told my younger sister, who played even more FFTA than I did after I passed the GBA down to her and considers it the best FF game, that its story was controversial, she stared at me and said: 'FFTA had a story?')
Tactics Advance iterated on its storied predecessor in a number of ways, but what I've realized starting to play Tactics blind is that the core of the system - the way everything looks, moves, the action menus, the character menus, they're all basically the same. As such, this first update has seemed in many ways oddly familiar, like playing the sequel to a game from my childhood - only it is, of course, the original I never knew. And I'm sure this will lead to me being repeatedly blindsided by the ways in which Tactics does differ from its later descendent.
But by the nature of Tactics Advance's strange story, it can in no way be considered a sequel to Tactics. So the story is entirely unfamiliar to me, and that's going to make this interesting, because I am pretty sure I have seen a lot of praise of Tactics' story… And a lot of complaints about its localization.
This should be familiar to us by now. With VIII, we've finally stepped out of the 'Bad Localization' era; we've gone through VII and VIII scrutinizing the games for translation errors, missed dialogue boxes, distorted characterization… With IX, we should enter the era of direct cooperation between localization teams (that started with VIII, according to Wikipedia, but had mixed early results) where there are no longer major translation mistakes. But right now, we take a step back to 1997, years before that time. And by all accounts, in terms of conveying meaning, FFT's translation is even worse than VII.
But there is another way.
In 2007, Square Enix released Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions on PlayStation Portable. This 'updated version' of FFT is not quite a remake or a remaster; more like a port with various updates. Among those is an entirely rewritten EN script - one that is very different from any FF script we've seen in this thread so far, because it introduced a kind of archaic sensibility to the game's writing. You'll see what I mean.
I've waved around the question of 'should I play the PSX emulated version of the game, or WotL' a few times, enough to gather some data points. My overall conclusion from this, having mulled it over, is that while we have at least one very strong defender for the PSX's version's merits (with WotL localization modded in if need be), by weight of numbers both in this thread and in Discord conversations there seemed to be a strong consensus around the PSP version. So I downloaded a PSP emulator.
I then promptly lost several hours playing Dissidia Final Fantasy.
Once I gathered my senses and emerged from the fighting game hole, I played the opening of War of the Lions and put it down. Then I thought to myself, 'I should still play some of the PSX version, to compare this remake to the 'baseline' of the original and its localization,' so I closed the PSP and opened the PSX.
I then lost several hours playing Bushido Blade.
Eventually, I managed to actually wrest myself from Square's fascinating and innovative forays into the fighting game genre to play the opening of the PSX original. I will not be doing simultaneous runs of the game (are you crazy), but today, for this opening update, dear readers, you are graced with a comparison of the two - first, the War of the Lions version. Then, the PSX original.
Let's begin.
II. Opening
No, dammit, that's just Bushido Blade again!!!
Ahem.
In classic PSX fashion, which is a little out of style nowadays, the game opens up on a fancy OP that continues to play until we either press a button or let it finish. As was often the case then, this OP is an ambiguous mix of pure aesthetic and what could be important information related to the setting, it's hard to tell at first; it consists largely of cool atmospheric shots of, uh, architecture?
"Sword in hand, a warrior clutches stone to breast
In sword etched he his fading memories
In stone, his tempered skill
By sword attested, by stone revealed
Their tale can now be told
The Zodiac Brave Story"
Very cool!
The description of engraving sword skills and memories into a stone is strongly reminiscent of how Soul Crystals work in XIV - essentially, every job works by you taking up a soul crystal that bears the memories of past wielders of your weapon of choice, teaching you their techniques, and engraving your own techniques into it as you develop them. It also brings to mind how Tactics Advance worked, where you learned individual techniques from practicing with specific weapons, and feels like a development from FFV's job system, where characters inherited jobs from shards of crystals bearing the memories of ancient heroes. But it also sounds more directly plot-relevant - like there is a specific story being engraved in that stone, which is now being told.
We'll find out more about that almost immediately upon selecting 'New Game.' Of course, there is also a 'Tutorial' menu, which, hm.
The fact that the Tutorial is separate from the game doesn't fill me with great confidence about its immediate approachability. Let's do a quick détour over there to see what that's about…
…so, the tutorial is presented in the form of a dialogue menu, where we select a topic like 'the Party Roster,' and then Master Darlavon explains to us what the Party Roster is through a dialogue sequence with inputs played out for us, including 'in-character' dialogue beats to set this as a school lesson. It's very atmospheric and going through the entire tutorial will take forever. I just don't have time for that. Let's just click New Game and see what happens.
What we are greeted first is a first person monologue, set against what looks like a stone wall, evoking ancient architecture. The intro is explicitly set from the perspective of the distant future, in which the events we are about to witness happened long ago, and are already set - in stone, as it were. That's certainly an interesting way of framing the player's (lack of) agency.
The name we are choosing here is, of course, the name of the mysterious forgotten hero whom we'll be playing as. By default, his name isMarche Ramza. As to why the game is asking for our birth date, uh, I don't know? Given that this is the 'Zodiac Brave Story,' perhaps it will have an impact on some kind of Zodiac related mechanic? Ramza doesn't appear to have a default birth date other than January 1st, so I just make him a Taurus like myself and move on.
…
But what a fascinating premise that is. Right off the gate, the first thing the game is telling us is that our deeds were forgotten, our hero expunged from history's weave, not merely by accident but through active obfuscation by some evil Church, his name dragged through the mud in favor of Some Asshole. That definitely sounds like a game with, if not a Bad End, at the very least a bittersweet 'you saved the world but no one will remember you and some asshole will get all the credit'. That's a pretty bleak outset from the opening monologue!
Let's find out more.
A cell-shaded CGI cutscene proceeds to play. This is some PSP tech, beyond the capabilities of the original hardware, no doubt about this. It's very pretty, and fairly straightforward, giving the opening a strong anime vibe. This guy standing in the stream up there? He's a knight in golden armor, riding a Chocobo - as we'll see, it appears that Chocobo Cavalry as the world standard (with horses non-existent or a rare oddity) is making a return from VI, something I'm absolutely delighted by. He and a handful of fellow riders ride across wind-swept plains, through overcast ruins. All the while, his face is determined, though… Dark. This man does not bear an expression of kindness.
Inasmuch as we can glean emotions from these chibi faces.
Then, we transition to the game's in-engine graphics, and the interior of a church.
A woman is praying, inside of a very Catholic-looking church, to an unnamed Father. It definitely looks like the game is leaning a harder on the 'Generic European Medieval Fantasy Setting' than other FF games have in the past, at least at first glance. Like…
Woman: "O Father, abandon not Your wayward children of Ivalice, but deliver us from our sins, that we might know salvation."
…this is pretty much just the Lord's Prayer.
At this moment, a (female) Knight speaks up; we learn almost immediately that her name is Agrias. At least judging from the opening battles of the games, it looks like the game is interestingly gender-equal in terms of having male and female models for all classes and mixing them in every group you run into, which is neat.
Agrias: "Lady Ovelia, it is time."
Ovelia: "I'll not be much longer, Agrias."
Agrias: "Your escort has already arrived, Majesty."
Priest: "Please, heed the good lady's word, Highness. You must hurry."
[At this point, a group of heavily armed men enters the room.]
Swordsman: "Still in here, are you? It's been the better part of an hour!"
Agrias: "Gaffgarion, you forget yourself, ser! You are in the presence of the princess!"
[At this point, both the knights behind Gaffgarion drop to one knee, with a hand to their heart. After a second, Gaffgarion raises a hand to his chest and inclines his head, though he does not kneel.]
Gaffgarion: "Mayhap bowed heads would less offend. You would do well to waste less time on idle pleasantries."
Agrias: "I see even the noble Order of the Northern Sky cannot rid itself of vulgar knaves."
Gaffgarion: "A guard captain in these rain-sodden hinterlands ought not expect chivalry. We are in the employ of the Order, not of it. Our pay does not cover trite courtesies to the likes of you."
Agrias: "Govern your tongue!"
Overlia: [Standing up.] "Enough. Let us be on our way."
Priest: "The Father watch over you, child."
Ovelia: "And you, Elder."
This dialogue is fascinating.
"I'll not be much longer" and "Bowed heads would less offend" are deliberately archaic sentence structures. They parse just fine, at least to me, but if I'd used them in one of my middle school English classes, my teacher would have corrected me for using a structure that's, if not incorrect, at least not the one we want to incentivize ESL speakers to use; You teach a child to say 'I won't be much longer' because 'I'll not be much longer' stands out as odd. Previous FF games that have tried to sound archaic for the occasional character like Odin utilized Ye Faux Shakespearian English, just throwing around 'thee' and 'thou' without further thought; this is an actual effort undertaken to make even sentences with perfectly modern words sound faintly archaic, as well as a little poetic.
I don't mind it; in fact I find it aesthetically pleasing. But this is broadcasting the style that the entire game is probably going to have, make no mistake.
Also notably, the use of 'ser' to refer to Gaffgarion. 'Ser' is an alternate spelling of 'sir' or 'sire' found in Middle English - Middle English basically stops being used in the late 15th century, and ser dies with it, replaced by what we have now, sir and the somewhat archaic sire. As far as I'm aware, the ser spelling is almost entirely out of use until… 1996, when George R. R. Martin brings it back as a flavorful sprinkling to make the nomenclature of his fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire stand out a little from historical norms (see also: smallfolk, sellsword). Eleven years later, The War of the Lions comes out with a new script for the EN localization of Final Fantasy Tactics.
…
FFT: WotL is ripping off A Game of Thrones.
This is the funniest discovery I could have possibly made today.
Anyway, it looks like Gaffgarion and the two soldiers with him are mercenaries who were hired by an 'Order of the Northern Sky' to help the Princess escape pursuers, but unfortunately, it's too late. As Ovelia makes her goodbyes, the doors open, and another knight (also a woman; I'll stop commenting on this soon because it becomes unremarkable, which I appreciate in this context - the game just seems to have perfectly mix-gender armies on all sides) staggers through.
Priest: "Duke Goltanna's men?"
Gaffgarion: "We are paid for this. Time to earn our keep." [He directs a look at the boy in purple.] "What's this, Ramza? You above getting paid to do a job?"
Ramza: "I am a knight no longer. Just another sellsword."
Gaffgarion: "Right then. To battle!"
[They leave the room.]
Ovelia: "Deliver us, O Lord…"
Surprise, fuckers, it turns out the protagonist was in the room with us this entire time!
So our 'Ramza' was once a knight, and is now a mere mercenary working for Gaffgarion. Sure.
'Sellsword' isn't a true ASoIaF-ism, in that it is attested in older fantasy books, though rare; I blame GRRM entirely for the cultural penetration it has now where people think it's an actual archaic word for 'mercenary' as opposed to a fantasy construct following the model of 'pickpocket' to create a fake archaicism.
I mean, it's a good word, and I promise I won't be pestering y'all by picking out every faux anachronisms, just.
Maybe sometimes.
Before we get to the dialogue, I'd like to take a moment to pause and look at this picture.
No Final Fantasy game has looked like this - though of course, no FF has played like this, because FFT is, I am told, the heir to Tactics Ogre and the line of tactical RPGs, which it visually resembles. If Tactics Advance is anything to go by, every screen in the game is going to look like this: A void in which floats our battlefield, represented as a grid, composed of square tiles, with varying degrees of elevation and environmental factors like water. Here, for instance, there is a flat bridge connecting the two sides; a character could charge across the bridge, or attempt to flank from the side, but the lower elevation would mean that, for instance, it would be impossible to jump from the lowest point of the ground's depression to the bridge above; you would have to circle back through the area with the black soil. To the extent that characters ever 'travel' between screens (more on this later), these screens are all floating chunks of environment surrounded by The Void, with very blocky outlines and structures because they're all square tiles for characters to move across with predetermined moves.
This is the aesthetic of everything in the game that isn't an FMV cutscene. Which, in FFTA, was an… interesting experience. Let's see where Tactics takes us with it.
Agrias: "They bear the crest of the Black Lion… Duke Goltanna must be mad! Does he mean to start a war?"
Knight: "You there, wench! You cannot hope to defeat us! You will surrender the princess! If not… Well, I would hate to see anything happen to that pretty face of yours."
Gaffgarion: [Enters.] "A head-on assault. These swords of Goltana… Lackwits one and all."
Agrias: "In that case, we should be able to handle this without you, Gaffgarion."
Gaffgarion: "Mayhap you could, but there's no money to be made in that! Ladd! Ramza! With me!"
And here we have, very technically, our first battle of the game. It seems to be throwing us into the brink without a paddle. No tutorial, no nothing - the game clearly expects you to have read either the manual booklet, the tutorial found in the menu, or better yet, both. It's not too bad even if you don't know what you're doing, though; in this battle, we only control Ramza, and our allies are an overwhelming force who can take care of business on their own even if we're reduced to running around like headless chickens entering random commands every turn. Indeed, before our first turn comes up, Agrias and Gaffgalon continue their argument:
Gaffgarion: "Kill them all! Leave no man standing!"
Agrias: "You would have us slaughter them? Are you mad? Kill them here and you'll have played into Duke Goltanna's hands! We need only put them to rout!"
Gaffgarion: "I find dead men rout more easily."
Gaffgarion, you funny motherfucker. This guy is actually genuinely pretty hilarious. With that said, this is a very in medias res introduction - who the fuck is Duke Goltanna, why does he want the Princess, etc? We don't really need to know that yet, we just need to know he's a guy who's trying to abduct our charge and provoke us into a casus belli, and Gaffgarion is willing to risk that casus belli because he figures having no witnesses left alive is as good as anything else.
He then immediately takes his turn and obliterates half a dude's health track with magical blade of darkness that drains HP, an attack appropriately titled Shadowblade.
If I were the designer I'd have tweaked things so that the first guy to eat that has low enough HP to immediately die, just to sell it harder; as it stands it seems like it really is an extremely powerful move (it heals Gaffgarion for more HP than any enemy enemy will be capable of taking away with any one attack), just that his hapless target is left standing afterwards.
Then it's our turn. So let's talk about how the game plays.
This is our basic interface. It is composed of an action menu and a status window. Because a lot of sprites are identical with small differences in color, you can tell who is the active character with this glowing blue square under them indicating their tile.
Let's take this UI in order:
Move: Every turn, we can move a number of squares equal to our move speed. We also have a Jump height that establishes how far up we can go when facing heights. There are no diagonal moves, so all movement patterns look like a diamond broken up by whatever environmental obstacles exist. We can only move once; there's no moving 3 tiles, attacking, then 'finishing' our movement with our last 2 tiles. Move before or after.
Act: Every turn, we can take one action. The most basic action available to everyone is 'Attack', which allows a character to attack another within their attack range. ForMarche Ramza, that's one square to his front, left, right and back (again, no diagonals). Attacks can hit or miss, but so far they seem to have deterministic damage; the game will tell you how much damage you'll deal if you hit ahead of time, and it does not have a random range like in most FF games. There are other actions, which are based on characters' Jobs; Ramza's is "Mettle," more on this later.
Wait: You pick this if you just want to end your turn without acting, like if there is nobody within your move and attack range.
Status: You can always check your full character sheet at no cost.
AI: You can set a character to autobattle, if the game bores you I guess.
Below this, HP is familiar to us by now, MP will be used if any character has spells (this is not the case of Ramza at this time), and CT is… Charge Time appears to be the closest this game has to a take on ATB, or rather on a mechanic which existed in other entries as a 'hidden stat' determining how long it takes between an input and a character actually completing an action; this time it's visible as a gauge on the screen and I have no idea how it works and the game has not really explained it yet in those Tutorials I did read after playing to the end of this update. So I have no idea what it's about. Bravery and Faith are also two stats that are entirely novel, and if I find out what they do, I'll tell you. Also, Ramza's astrological sign is in that little status page?
Yeah, I have no idea what that's about either.
And finally, name and Job - Ramza is a Squire. More on this later.
For now, it's time to take our first combat actions.
Here we can see an early pitfall of the system: Ramza has a limited range of movement and no ranged attacks, and he rolled second place in initiative. Which means all he can do on his turn is advance to the furthest extent of his move stat (5 tiles) and stop, and from there I can't attack anyone. This leaves him in perfect range for one of the guys acting next to come over and smack him first. Whereas, if they had acted first, they would have tried moving first and stopped, and I would have hit them.
I'm sure an experienced player has the tactical awareness to know what to do with these situations, like deliberately waiting to let the guys come to you first, but I'm a meathead, so I just rush in regardless. Fortunately, Ramza has a command called Focus, which allows him to to increase his Attack by 1, so his turn isn't wasted.
Agrias is a Divine Knight, as opposed to Gaffgarion's Dark Knight, and she has a similarly impressive ability to conjure a sword of light that obliterates most of an enemy's HP, called 'Judgment Blade.' The red tiles you can see above represent the range of her attacks - both she and Gaffgarion have much more ability to strike at range than Ramza does.
The battle proceeds fairly straightforwardly from there. We have a Dark Knight and a Divine Knight on our side, plus two additional Knights, while Ramza and Ladd are mere Squires. Meanwhile, our opposition is made up of three Archers, a single Knight, and a Chemist. The Chemist is their one advantage - it's the base class that unlocks the Item command, so it can heal the enemy with Potions. But it's not enough to make up for the unbalance in power, and we swiftly begin to steamroll the enemies.
Here's an interesting thing, though:
Every time Ramza attacks an enemy, a little pop-up over his head tells us that he has gained XP and JP. I'm going to assume JP means Job Points; it looks like the game advances our characters on two tracks at the same time, character level and job level, and rather than a single package at the end of the fight or a reward on killing an enemy, it seems JP is earned for each successful gameplay action. That's interesting!
Here's another thing:
Here, the enemy Knight just managed to kill one of our own Knights… And he got XP and JP for it.
Enemies gain levels. They can, and in fact do, even gain levels mid-combat. That's wild. I wonder if this'll have a significant impact on gameplay - even if it doesn't, it's just a fun idea?
Eventually, we overwhelm the enemy with only one loss on our side, ending the fight and triggering another cutscene.
The mysterious knight from the intro cinematic snuck into the church while we were distracted with fighting his men - it seems like we fell for a trap. Her cries of 'unhand me!' are heard by Ramza and Agrias, who rush to the rescue, but they're too late.
Knight: "This way. Be quick! And try making a little less noise."
Ovelia: "I'll not take orders from you!"
Knight: "You've quite a mouth on you, princess." [He punches her in the stomach and she falls limp into his arms.] "Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I."
[He carries her into his arms. Agrias and Ramza arrive.]
Agrias: "Hold, there! Damn!"
Ramza: [He stares at the knight's face.] "...is it truly him?"*
[They both rush out of the church, but the knight is already on his chocobo. He gives Ramza a disinterested glance, then races away.]
Ramza: "It cannot be… Delita. He lives? But why does he fight under the banner of Duke Goltanna?"
Notably, all these lines are voiced, which took me completely by surprise - we're eight games deep into the Final Fantasy series at this point and not a single one has had vocals on anything other than music. But of course, War of the Lions dates from 2007, years after Final Fantasy X first introduced voice acting to the series.
I love the line "Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I." It's an incredibly efficient way to establish a character as not just a villain, but the kind of contemptible villain who knows what they're doing is wrong, but absolves themselves of any moral blame by framing their actions as merely the inevitable result of some historical motion which they merely happen to carry. A villain and a moral coward! I hate him already! And he's the guy who gets all the credit for solving whatever the plot of the game turns out to be for the next several hundred years? That doesn't feel great!
This concludes our in medias res introduction… And also this segment of the timeline.
Because this was all a view into the future, and next up, we move back to the past, and the beginnings of Ramza and Delita's story.
Arazlam (The Narrator): "Records of the hero Delita first appear one year before the outbreak of the War of the Lions. The loss of the Fifty Years' War saw knights returning from the front stripped of livelihood, their fealty to the Crown and nobility abandoned. Many became rogues and traitors, men donning the thief's cloak and plotting treason against the Crown."
Arazlam: "It was a time of great unrest for Ivalice - murder and theft were commonplace. Many were the young adventurer and mage who stepped forward to counter this threat. Of such, the city of Gariland, too, saw its share…"
Cut for image count.
I. Ancient History
It's time to take a slight détour.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a 1997 tactical role-playing game released by Square on the PlayStation. It post-dates Final Fantasy VII by a few months, and predates VIII by a little over a year, which means we are doing a slight leap backwards in time, to the time between VII and VIII, and a different kind of Final Fantasy.
It has been, say it with me now, "cited as one of the greatest video games of all time."
Final Fantasy Tactics is one of these games I know incredibly little about in terms of what the game is about, but whose cultural presence is impossible to ignore. Multiple people have told me that it was one of their favorite games of all time, or how excited they were to see me play it (which is still wild to me, that people really want to see me muse aloud about these games for months on end). There have been several debates about which version of the game I should play in this very thread. It is a massive cultural artifact, and yet I know nearly nothing about its story or its universe, or even its mechanics…
…sort of.
In 2003, Square released Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for Nintendo's GameBoy Advance console. The GBA was my constant companion for my early teenage years, and I played the shit out of FFTA. 2003 is in a bit of an odd place in FF history; coming off the golden age of nearly yearly widely acclaimed releases, it's in the gap between FF11 (2001) and FFX12 (2006), it's the year of the Square-Enix merger, the period in which the FF7 Compilation began to be released. With its development slightly predating the merger, and released a mere month before Final Fantasy X-2, Tactics Advance was the Final Fantasy series' first direct spin-off, though a spin-off of a spin-off rather than a mainline entry. Tactics Advance is a fascinating artifact of the 00s, combining a depth of gameplay that can support a hundred hours of play for play's own sake with a story that is, let's say, controversial. (Anecdotally, when I told my younger sister, who played even more FFTA than I did after I passed the GBA down to her and considers it the best FF game, that its story was controversial, she stared at me and said: 'FFTA had a story?')
Tactics Advance iterated on its storied predecessor in a number of ways, but what I've realized starting to play Tactics blind is that the core of the system - the way everything looks, moves, the action menus, the character menus, they're all basically the same. As such, this first update has seemed in many ways oddly familiar, like playing the sequel to a game from my childhood - only it is, of course, the original I never knew. And I'm sure this will lead to me being repeatedly blindsided by the ways in which Tactics does differ from its later descendent.
But by the nature of Tactics Advance's strange story, it can in no way be considered a sequel to Tactics. So the story is entirely unfamiliar to me, and that's going to make this interesting, because I am pretty sure I have seen a lot of praise of Tactics' story… And a lot of complaints about its localization.
This should be familiar to us by now. With VIII, we've finally stepped out of the 'Bad Localization' era; we've gone through VII and VIII scrutinizing the games for translation errors, missed dialogue boxes, distorted characterization… With IX, we should enter the era of direct cooperation between localization teams (that started with VIII, according to Wikipedia, but had mixed early results) where there are no longer major translation mistakes. But right now, we take a step back to 1997, years before that time. And by all accounts, in terms of conveying meaning, FFT's translation is even worse than VII.
But there is another way.
In 2007, Square Enix released Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions on PlayStation Portable. This 'updated version' of FFT is not quite a remake or a remaster; more like a port with various updates. Among those is an entirely rewritten EN script - one that is very different from any FF script we've seen in this thread so far, because it introduced a kind of archaic sensibility to the game's writing. You'll see what I mean.
I've waved around the question of 'should I play the PSX emulated version of the game, or WotL' a few times, enough to gather some data points. My overall conclusion from this, having mulled it over, is that while we have at least one very strong defender for the PSX's version's merits (with WotL localization modded in if need be), by weight of numbers both in this thread and in Discord conversations there seemed to be a strong consensus around the PSP version. So I downloaded a PSP emulator.
I then promptly lost several hours playing Dissidia Final Fantasy.
Once I gathered my senses and emerged from the fighting game hole, I played the opening of War of the Lions and put it down. Then I thought to myself, 'I should still play some of the PSX version, to compare this remake to the 'baseline' of the original and its localization,' so I closed the PSP and opened the PSX.
I then lost several hours playing Bushido Blade.
Eventually, I managed to actually wrest myself from Square's fascinating and innovative forays into the fighting game genre to play the opening of the PSX original. I will not be doing simultaneous runs of the game (are you crazy), but today, for this opening update, dear readers, you are graced with a comparison of the two - first, the War of the Lions version. Then, the PSX original.
Let's begin.
II. Opening
No, dammit, that's just Bushido Blade again!!!
Ahem.
In classic PSX fashion, which is a little out of style nowadays, the game opens up on a fancy OP that continues to play until we either press a button or let it finish. As was often the case then, this OP is an ambiguous mix of pure aesthetic and what could be important information related to the setting, it's hard to tell at first; it consists largely of cool atmospheric shots of, uh, architecture?
"Sword in hand, a warrior clutches stone to breast
In sword etched he his fading memories
In stone, his tempered skill
By sword attested, by stone revealed
Their tale can now be told
The Zodiac Brave Story"
Very cool!
The description of engraving sword skills and memories into a stone is strongly reminiscent of how Soul Crystals work in XIV - essentially, every job works by you taking up a soul crystal that bears the memories of past wielders of your weapon of choice, teaching you their techniques, and engraving your own techniques into it as you develop them. It also brings to mind how Tactics Advance worked, where you learned individual techniques from practicing with specific weapons, and feels like a development from FFV's job system, where characters inherited jobs from shards of crystals bearing the memories of ancient heroes. But it also sounds more directly plot-relevant - like there is a specific story being engraved in that stone, which is now being told.
We'll find out more about that almost immediately upon selecting 'New Game.' Of course, there is also a 'Tutorial' menu, which, hm.
The fact that the Tutorial is separate from the game doesn't fill me with great confidence about its immediate approachability. Let's do a quick détour over there to see what that's about…
…so, the tutorial is presented in the form of a dialogue menu, where we select a topic like 'the Party Roster,' and then Master Darlavon explains to us what the Party Roster is through a dialogue sequence with inputs played out for us, including 'in-character' dialogue beats to set this as a school lesson. It's very atmospheric and going through the entire tutorial will take forever. I just don't have time for that. Let's just click New Game and see what happens.
What we are greeted first is a first person monologue, set against what looks like a stone wall, evoking ancient architecture. The intro is explicitly set from the perspective of the distant future, in which the events we are about to witness happened long ago, and are already set - in stone, as it were. That's certainly an interesting way of framing the player's (lack of) agency.
Article: I am Arazlam, student of Ivalice's Middle Age. You are familiar with the War of the Lions, no? It was a bitter war of succession that rent the land of Ivalice in two. Here we first find mention of Delita Heiral, a heretofore unknown young man, the hero who would draw the curtain on this dark act of our history.
His is a heroism of great renown - a story familiar to all who dwell within our land.
Ah, but what the eye sees is oftentimes, a mere fragment of the truth. There was another young man, the youngest of House Beoulve, long famed for producing leaders of knights and men. There is no official record of the role he played on history's stage.
However, according to the Durai Papers, the existence of which became known to the public only this last year - they had long lain concealed in Church archives - this forgotten young man is in fact the true hero.
The Church maintains he was a heretic, an inciter of unrest and disturber of the peace. Which account is to be believed? Join me in my search to uncover the answer. Ah, but before we begin, might I ask you to share with me your name and the date of your birth?
The name we are choosing here is, of course, the name of the mysterious forgotten hero whom we'll be playing as. By default, his name is
…
But what a fascinating premise that is. Right off the gate, the first thing the game is telling us is that our deeds were forgotten, our hero expunged from history's weave, not merely by accident but through active obfuscation by some evil Church, his name dragged through the mud in favor of Some Asshole. That definitely sounds like a game with, if not a Bad End, at the very least a bittersweet 'you saved the world but no one will remember you and some asshole will get all the credit'. That's a pretty bleak outset from the opening monologue!
Let's find out more.
A cell-shaded CGI cutscene proceeds to play. This is some PSP tech, beyond the capabilities of the original hardware, no doubt about this. It's very pretty, and fairly straightforward, giving the opening a strong anime vibe. This guy standing in the stream up there? He's a knight in golden armor, riding a Chocobo - as we'll see, it appears that Chocobo Cavalry as the world standard (with horses non-existent or a rare oddity) is making a return from VI, something I'm absolutely delighted by. He and a handful of fellow riders ride across wind-swept plains, through overcast ruins. All the while, his face is determined, though… Dark. This man does not bear an expression of kindness.
Inasmuch as we can glean emotions from these chibi faces.
Then, we transition to the game's in-engine graphics, and the interior of a church.
A woman is praying, inside of a very Catholic-looking church, to an unnamed Father. It definitely looks like the game is leaning a harder on the 'Generic European Medieval Fantasy Setting' than other FF games have in the past, at least at first glance. Like…
Woman: "O Father, abandon not Your wayward children of Ivalice, but deliver us from our sins, that we might know salvation."
…this is pretty much just the Lord's Prayer.
At this moment, a (female) Knight speaks up; we learn almost immediately that her name is Agrias. At least judging from the opening battles of the games, it looks like the game is interestingly gender-equal in terms of having male and female models for all classes and mixing them in every group you run into, which is neat.
Agrias: "Lady Ovelia, it is time."
Ovelia: "I'll not be much longer, Agrias."
Agrias: "Your escort has already arrived, Majesty."
Priest: "Please, heed the good lady's word, Highness. You must hurry."
[At this point, a group of heavily armed men enters the room.]
Swordsman: "Still in here, are you? It's been the better part of an hour!"
Agrias: "Gaffgarion, you forget yourself, ser! You are in the presence of the princess!"
[At this point, both the knights behind Gaffgarion drop to one knee, with a hand to their heart. After a second, Gaffgarion raises a hand to his chest and inclines his head, though he does not kneel.]
Gaffgarion: "Mayhap bowed heads would less offend. You would do well to waste less time on idle pleasantries."
Agrias: "I see even the noble Order of the Northern Sky cannot rid itself of vulgar knaves."
Gaffgarion: "A guard captain in these rain-sodden hinterlands ought not expect chivalry. We are in the employ of the Order, not of it. Our pay does not cover trite courtesies to the likes of you."
Agrias: "Govern your tongue!"
Overlia: [Standing up.] "Enough. Let us be on our way."
Priest: "The Father watch over you, child."
Ovelia: "And you, Elder."
This dialogue is fascinating.
"I'll not be much longer" and "Bowed heads would less offend" are deliberately archaic sentence structures. They parse just fine, at least to me, but if I'd used them in one of my middle school English classes, my teacher would have corrected me for using a structure that's, if not incorrect, at least not the one we want to incentivize ESL speakers to use; You teach a child to say 'I won't be much longer' because 'I'll not be much longer' stands out as odd. Previous FF games that have tried to sound archaic for the occasional character like Odin utilized Ye Faux Shakespearian English, just throwing around 'thee' and 'thou' without further thought; this is an actual effort undertaken to make even sentences with perfectly modern words sound faintly archaic, as well as a little poetic.
I don't mind it; in fact I find it aesthetically pleasing. But this is broadcasting the style that the entire game is probably going to have, make no mistake.
Also notably, the use of 'ser' to refer to Gaffgarion. 'Ser' is an alternate spelling of 'sir' or 'sire' found in Middle English - Middle English basically stops being used in the late 15th century, and ser dies with it, replaced by what we have now, sir and the somewhat archaic sire. As far as I'm aware, the ser spelling is almost entirely out of use until… 1996, when George R. R. Martin brings it back as a flavorful sprinkling to make the nomenclature of his fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire stand out a little from historical norms (see also: smallfolk, sellsword). Eleven years later, The War of the Lions comes out with a new script for the EN localization of Final Fantasy Tactics.
…
FFT: WotL is ripping off A Game of Thrones.
This is the funniest discovery I could have possibly made today.
Anyway, it looks like Gaffgarion and the two soldiers with him are mercenaries who were hired by an 'Order of the Northern Sky' to help the Princess escape pursuers, but unfortunately, it's too late. As Ovelia makes her goodbyes, the doors open, and another knight (also a woman; I'll stop commenting on this soon because it becomes unremarkable, which I appreciate in this context - the game just seems to have perfectly mix-gender armies on all sides) staggers through.
Priest: "Duke Goltanna's men?"
Gaffgarion: "We are paid for this. Time to earn our keep." [He directs a look at the boy in purple.] "What's this, Ramza? You above getting paid to do a job?"
Ramza: "I am a knight no longer. Just another sellsword."
Gaffgarion: "Right then. To battle!"
[They leave the room.]
Ovelia: "Deliver us, O Lord…"
Surprise, fuckers, it turns out the protagonist was in the room with us this entire time!
So our 'Ramza' was once a knight, and is now a mere mercenary working for Gaffgarion. Sure.
'Sellsword' isn't a true ASoIaF-ism, in that it is attested in older fantasy books, though rare; I blame GRRM entirely for the cultural penetration it has now where people think it's an actual archaic word for 'mercenary' as opposed to a fantasy construct following the model of 'pickpocket' to create a fake archaicism.
I mean, it's a good word, and I promise I won't be pestering y'all by picking out every faux anachronisms, just.
Maybe sometimes.
Before we get to the dialogue, I'd like to take a moment to pause and look at this picture.
No Final Fantasy game has looked like this - though of course, no FF has played like this, because FFT is, I am told, the heir to Tactics Ogre and the line of tactical RPGs, which it visually resembles. If Tactics Advance is anything to go by, every screen in the game is going to look like this: A void in which floats our battlefield, represented as a grid, composed of square tiles, with varying degrees of elevation and environmental factors like water. Here, for instance, there is a flat bridge connecting the two sides; a character could charge across the bridge, or attempt to flank from the side, but the lower elevation would mean that, for instance, it would be impossible to jump from the lowest point of the ground's depression to the bridge above; you would have to circle back through the area with the black soil. To the extent that characters ever 'travel' between screens (more on this later), these screens are all floating chunks of environment surrounded by The Void, with very blocky outlines and structures because they're all square tiles for characters to move across with predetermined moves.
This is the aesthetic of everything in the game that isn't an FMV cutscene. Which, in FFTA, was an… interesting experience. Let's see where Tactics takes us with it.
Agrias: "They bear the crest of the Black Lion… Duke Goltanna must be mad! Does he mean to start a war?"
Knight: "You there, wench! You cannot hope to defeat us! You will surrender the princess! If not… Well, I would hate to see anything happen to that pretty face of yours."
Gaffgarion: [Enters.] "A head-on assault. These swords of Goltana… Lackwits one and all."
Agrias: "In that case, we should be able to handle this without you, Gaffgarion."
Gaffgarion: "Mayhap you could, but there's no money to be made in that! Ladd! Ramza! With me!"
And here we have, very technically, our first battle of the game. It seems to be throwing us into the brink without a paddle. No tutorial, no nothing - the game clearly expects you to have read either the manual booklet, the tutorial found in the menu, or better yet, both. It's not too bad even if you don't know what you're doing, though; in this battle, we only control Ramza, and our allies are an overwhelming force who can take care of business on their own even if we're reduced to running around like headless chickens entering random commands every turn. Indeed, before our first turn comes up, Agrias and Gaffgalon continue their argument:
Gaffgarion: "Kill them all! Leave no man standing!"
Agrias: "You would have us slaughter them? Are you mad? Kill them here and you'll have played into Duke Goltanna's hands! We need only put them to rout!"
Gaffgarion: "I find dead men rout more easily."
Gaffgarion, you funny motherfucker. This guy is actually genuinely pretty hilarious. With that said, this is a very in medias res introduction - who the fuck is Duke Goltanna, why does he want the Princess, etc? We don't really need to know that yet, we just need to know he's a guy who's trying to abduct our charge and provoke us into a casus belli, and Gaffgarion is willing to risk that casus belli because he figures having no witnesses left alive is as good as anything else.
He then immediately takes his turn and obliterates half a dude's health track with magical blade of darkness that drains HP, an attack appropriately titled Shadowblade.
If I were the designer I'd have tweaked things so that the first guy to eat that has low enough HP to immediately die, just to sell it harder; as it stands it seems like it really is an extremely powerful move (it heals Gaffgarion for more HP than any enemy enemy will be capable of taking away with any one attack), just that his hapless target is left standing afterwards.
Then it's our turn. So let's talk about how the game plays.
This is our basic interface. It is composed of an action menu and a status window. Because a lot of sprites are identical with small differences in color, you can tell who is the active character with this glowing blue square under them indicating their tile.
Let's take this UI in order:
Move: Every turn, we can move a number of squares equal to our move speed. We also have a Jump height that establishes how far up we can go when facing heights. There are no diagonal moves, so all movement patterns look like a diamond broken up by whatever environmental obstacles exist. We can only move once; there's no moving 3 tiles, attacking, then 'finishing' our movement with our last 2 tiles. Move before or after.
Act: Every turn, we can take one action. The most basic action available to everyone is 'Attack', which allows a character to attack another within their attack range. For
Wait: You pick this if you just want to end your turn without acting, like if there is nobody within your move and attack range.
Status: You can always check your full character sheet at no cost.
AI: You can set a character to autobattle, if the game bores you I guess.
Below this, HP is familiar to us by now, MP will be used if any character has spells (this is not the case of Ramza at this time), and CT is… Charge Time appears to be the closest this game has to a take on ATB, or rather on a mechanic which existed in other entries as a 'hidden stat' determining how long it takes between an input and a character actually completing an action; this time it's visible as a gauge on the screen and I have no idea how it works and the game has not really explained it yet in those Tutorials I did read after playing to the end of this update. So I have no idea what it's about. Bravery and Faith are also two stats that are entirely novel, and if I find out what they do, I'll tell you. Also, Ramza's astrological sign is in that little status page?
Yeah, I have no idea what that's about either.
And finally, name and Job - Ramza is a Squire. More on this later.
For now, it's time to take our first combat actions.
Here we can see an early pitfall of the system: Ramza has a limited range of movement and no ranged attacks, and he rolled second place in initiative. Which means all he can do on his turn is advance to the furthest extent of his move stat (5 tiles) and stop, and from there I can't attack anyone. This leaves him in perfect range for one of the guys acting next to come over and smack him first. Whereas, if they had acted first, they would have tried moving first and stopped, and I would have hit them.
I'm sure an experienced player has the tactical awareness to know what to do with these situations, like deliberately waiting to let the guys come to you first, but I'm a meathead, so I just rush in regardless. Fortunately, Ramza has a command called Focus, which allows him to to increase his Attack by 1, so his turn isn't wasted.
Agrias is a Divine Knight, as opposed to Gaffgarion's Dark Knight, and she has a similarly impressive ability to conjure a sword of light that obliterates most of an enemy's HP, called 'Judgment Blade.' The red tiles you can see above represent the range of her attacks - both she and Gaffgarion have much more ability to strike at range than Ramza does.
The battle proceeds fairly straightforwardly from there. We have a Dark Knight and a Divine Knight on our side, plus two additional Knights, while Ramza and Ladd are mere Squires. Meanwhile, our opposition is made up of three Archers, a single Knight, and a Chemist. The Chemist is their one advantage - it's the base class that unlocks the Item command, so it can heal the enemy with Potions. But it's not enough to make up for the unbalance in power, and we swiftly begin to steamroll the enemies.
Here's an interesting thing, though:
Every time Ramza attacks an enemy, a little pop-up over his head tells us that he has gained XP and JP. I'm going to assume JP means Job Points; it looks like the game advances our characters on two tracks at the same time, character level and job level, and rather than a single package at the end of the fight or a reward on killing an enemy, it seems JP is earned for each successful gameplay action. That's interesting!
Here's another thing:
Here, the enemy Knight just managed to kill one of our own Knights… And he got XP and JP for it.
Enemies gain levels. They can, and in fact do, even gain levels mid-combat. That's wild. I wonder if this'll have a significant impact on gameplay - even if it doesn't, it's just a fun idea?
Eventually, we overwhelm the enemy with only one loss on our side, ending the fight and triggering another cutscene.
The mysterious knight from the intro cinematic snuck into the church while we were distracted with fighting his men - it seems like we fell for a trap. Her cries of 'unhand me!' are heard by Ramza and Agrias, who rush to the rescue, but they're too late.
Knight: "This way. Be quick! And try making a little less noise."
Ovelia: "I'll not take orders from you!"
Knight: "You've quite a mouth on you, princess." [He punches her in the stomach and she falls limp into his arms.] "Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I."
[He carries her into his arms. Agrias and Ramza arrive.]
Agrias: "Hold, there! Damn!"
Ramza: [He stares at the knight's face.] "...is it truly him?"*
[They both rush out of the church, but the knight is already on his chocobo. He gives Ramza a disinterested glance, then races away.]
Ramza: "It cannot be… Delita. He lives? But why does he fight under the banner of Duke Goltanna?"
Notably, all these lines are voiced, which took me completely by surprise - we're eight games deep into the Final Fantasy series at this point and not a single one has had vocals on anything other than music. But of course, War of the Lions dates from 2007, years after Final Fantasy X first introduced voice acting to the series.
I love the line "Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I." It's an incredibly efficient way to establish a character as not just a villain, but the kind of contemptible villain who knows what they're doing is wrong, but absolves themselves of any moral blame by framing their actions as merely the inevitable result of some historical motion which they merely happen to carry. A villain and a moral coward! I hate him already! And he's the guy who gets all the credit for solving whatever the plot of the game turns out to be for the next several hundred years? That doesn't feel great!
This concludes our in medias res introduction… And also this segment of the timeline.
Because this was all a view into the future, and next up, we move back to the past, and the beginnings of Ramza and Delita's story.
Arazlam (The Narrator): "Records of the hero Delita first appear one year before the outbreak of the War of the Lions. The loss of the Fifty Years' War saw knights returning from the front stripped of livelihood, their fealty to the Crown and nobility abandoned. Many became rogues and traitors, men donning the thief's cloak and plotting treason against the Crown."
Arazlam: "It was a time of great unrest for Ivalice - murder and theft were commonplace. Many were the young adventurer and mage who stepped forward to counter this threat. Of such, the city of Gariland, too, saw its share…"
Cut for image count.
Last edited:
Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 1.B: Intro & Gariland
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
III. The First Battle
Chapter title cards, neat! We are informed that this is 'The Royal Military Akademy at Gariland.' Yes, 'Akademy.'
99% odds this game spells magic as 'magick.'
Apprentice #1: "Another wain was struck last night on its way to Eagrose."
Apprentice #2: "The Corpse Brigade again?"
Ramza: "I wonder where all this leads… Delita, what do you make of this?"
Delita: "I'm not sure. I have my guesses, but… I think Duke Larg is coming to Gariland."
Ramza: "Duke Larg? Why?"
Delita: "Not just the duke. The Marquis Elmdore de Limberry, too."
Ramza: "That's the first I've heard of it. This has not the sound of a state visit."
Delita: "All of Ivalice is in turmoil. The Order's supposed to be keeping things under control, but the fact is, they number too few."
Ramza: "And they mean to bolster their numbers with us?"
Man's Voice: [From outside the room] "All right, everybody, form up!"
So far so political medieval fantasy - there are rumors afoot, dukes and marquis making plays, widespread disorder, knights turned bandits, all that good stuff to set a video game in. Although wain is obnoxious; just say cart, man.
Notably this is a very different tone from any Final Fantasy we've previously had. The closest we ever came to caring about kingdom politics was IV with Baron's internal dissent, but even this was a far cry from internal disorder with dukes fighting one another and princesses being politically important, and casus belli actually mattering. Final Fantasy is largely a series about how singular individuals move the world; it cares about Kings and Emperors and wandering heroes, it's never paid attention to the granularity of internal politics of nations.
But it's looking like this game might actually take place entirely within the Kingdom of Ivalice, rather than leaving within the first five hours to explore the world map and never come back, which would also be extremely novel. And furthermore, so far, the game's setting seem like it's actually going for the 'Generic European Medieval (Secretly Early Modern) Fantasy' vibe that the Final Fantasy series has always (arguably with the exception of I) avoided in favor of weird schizo-tech settings with airships and magitek.
Which is all to say: Even if you strip away the whole 'tactical RPG' angle that makes this game play completely different from all other FFs, it would still make sense why this is a spinoff rather than a mainline entry: Its world building, aesthetic and narrative sensibilities are a complete shift sideways from the series' usual fare.
At this point, a Knight of the Order of the Northern Sky enters and everyone falls into two squares. He addresses the crowd as 'knights apprentice,' so we're seeing Ramza before he quit the order for the unglamorous life of a mercenary. The Order has been tasked with eliminating the Corpse Brigade, a notorious gang of outlaws with a grudge against the Crown, for which the Order will ally with the forces of Duke Larg's royal guard. That's not our job, though; rather, because the Duke will be leaving his castle undefended to join the effort, our job is to literally man the fort, defending the Duke's domain while he's gone from stray brigands.
Before we head there, though, we have our first assignment: a band of thieves was routed by the Order and is fleeing towards Gariland, where we are located. Our job is to intercept them and, well, kill everyone.
We are offered the option to save there, and then we are dumped to this odd menu:
How strange! We are of course provided no explanation and at this point I am refusing to check out the tutorial out of sheer stubborn pique, I want to play the game. We can check Ramza's status, and we can delete him from this tile and move him to another tile. From my memories of FFTA, we're looking at a deployment screen where we decide in what formation to deploy our troops, except in FFTA we get to see what the battlefield will look like while deploying, whereas here we're just deciding based on guesswork, and also we only have one character anyway. So let's start!
Rogue: "What have we here… We moppets, is it? Our luck's went and turned for the better! Aw'right, lads! Cut through these ones and we're good as fled! We'll make quick work of them! And don't be leaving no squealers behind, neither!"
Delita is deployed alongside us, but the rest of the squad is a no-show; I'm guessing they're off-screen fighting the rest of the band elsewhere. Still, we can probably take… What's this… four Squires and a Chemist? Easy mode.
Here, you can see Ramza's movement range in blue, and his action menu showing both Attack and Mettle.
When our turn comes up, we get this exchange between our protagonists:
Delita: "Careful, Ramza! Remember: The well-aimed thrust pierces the mail."
Ramza: "Don't patronize me, Delita! We Beoulves know our way around a battlefield."
Rogue: "Beoulve, was it? Heir to the noble House Beoulve, I'd wager. Looks like we have ourselves some apprentices from the Akademy! Well, highborn moppets is still moppets!"
Ramza: "Lay down your arms or die clutching them! None will mourn your passing."
Rogue: "And you mean to make us do that, then? You're in far over your little heads!"
Harsh, Ramza.
Unfortunately, Ramza's ability to deliver on his taunt is severely curtailed by the fact that, uh…
This no longer being the flash-forward prologue, he is now lv 1 with only 50 HP instead of 151, and almost all of his Mettle commands are gone - he only has Chant, which takes half of his HP in order to heal a teammate by twice that amount.
Also, Delita is another Guest Character: I don't control him, just like I didn't control Gaffgarion and Agrias.
I still head into the battle with full confidence that it wouldn't be set up this way if it wasn't winnable, corner a lady Squire on the rooftops to engage her solo without anyone to backstab me, while Delita takes the central street below. Unfortunately, while Ramza's superior stats make him more than capable of handling his opponent alone, Delita… doesn't fare as well. He is also just a Squire with only a basic attack and Chant. The enemies quickly surround him, and he is now dealing only one attack per turn while taking three… And very quickly the Chemist shows himself to be the most dangerous opponent because its Potion heals 30 HP, which is more than Ramza or Delita can deal in a single attack, allowing the Chemist to completely cancel our progress wearing down the foe.
Delita is first to fall, and then…
The fuck do you mean, game over. I am supposed to actually win this? That fight is unwinnable!!
But fine. Whatever. We'll try again; this time I'll attempt to isolate and eliminate the Chemist first, cutting off the enemy's healing supply. This will still leave us outnumbered 2:1, but better raw stats should see us to victory.
This does not work. Because I can't control Delita, I can't have my two characters focus down the healer. Ramza is left to make 20-damage attacks on his own, and the Chemist is able to heal himself back to full every turn. Soon, Delita falls, and then I'm left trying to run away faster than the enemies can catch me in hope of defeating them piecemeal, which…
The fact that enemies gain EXP for killing me is just adding insult to injury.
This is not working. I'm clearly missing something here. The game would not present a problem this difficult as its first real battle.
Let's spend more time in the deployment menu to see if we can figure out a solution.
…
Okay, so, when you're in the menu, there are no other visible party members. Nor is there any obvious way to make party members appear. Turns out, you have to open the Status menu, which opens on a page listing Ramza's traits, and then click L1 or R1 so that the page will turn to the next member in our group, which we have, apparently. Then we tab out of the Status menu and we now have that character's sprite hovering above one of the tiles.
In this fashion, we can load up to five characters before the fight.
So.
Yeah.
With five party members plus Delita, we actually have a numerical advantage. More importantly, we now have two Chemists - units with weaker attacks than Squire, but who can use Potions (it has a range of several tiles and is obstructed by terrain like a ranged weapon, so they don't need to hug our Squires but we do need to be mindful of location and spacing), meaning now we have healing, allowing us to wear down the enemy safely. Additionally, not all our Squires have the same starting Mettle abilities; some know Stone, a very basic ranged attacks which consists in literally throwing a stone at the enemy, allowing us to actually deal damage at range, which was previously impossible.
The battle concludes pretty gruesomely - because of the way the game works, killing opponents means we now have a comparative advantage (our guys > their guys), which makes killing the next opponent easier, which means that the end of the fight is us chasing down their fleeing Chemist until we corner him at the edge of the map, surround him, and take turns stabbing him to death.
Ramza: "Honest work would see them die old in bed, yet they choose instead this early grave. Why persist in such folly?"
I don't know, Ramza. Have you considered what could be the reasons that lead someone to banditry? How about that Fifty Year War we just heard about that ravaged the country and left countless knights penniless and without occupation?
We end on a screen that proudly proclaims "THE BATTLE IS WON!" and tells us that we won a 'Bonus Coin' of 500 gil. It's unclear what makes this coin 'bonus'; we are separately rewarded with a loot screen:
2000 Gil, a Mythril Knife, a Phoenix Down, and a Potion. Not bad for a day's work. Being a brutal enforcer of state power sure pays!
Following this fight, we are immediately led to the World Map, and basic instructions about travel. This isn't ye old FF kind of world map, though; it is literally a map.
I fucking knew it, I knew they were going to spell it magick!
The map presents a series of locations. We move Ramza's icon to the next dot on the map, and he crosses that distance and reach the next point. I assume that 'random encounters' will occur in the form of unexpected battles while crossing from one point to another. When we're at a location, we can't actually enter it within the gameplay; rather, each location is a menu, and from that menu, we can select options like shops.
Earlier, I talked about how the game's screens work, and how every screen is constructed like a battle screen, and this expands to what was, for me as a child playing Tactics Advance, the weirdest and most off-putting conceit about the game:
There are no 'town' areas, or 'civilian' areas, or 'no-combat' areas. If the game is anything like FFTA, we will never control Ramza's movements directly outside the context of a battle. Everything in the game that isn't combat is a menu. When we saw that cutscene with the Knight giving out orders? We did not control characters during that bit, they moved entirely on their own. Here in the shop, we don't move Ramza to enter or leave; we select the shop in the menu, dialogue with the shopkeeper opens, and once we click Exit, we are dumped back on the world map. We can't visit Gariland as a town, we can't just walk around anywhere. This game is three things: Menus, dialogue cutscenes, and combat.
It's a very… Pared down experience. But FFT is supposed to have a great story, so I'm holding hope that it doesn't negatively impact the narrative.
IV. Basics of Jobs
So, let's head into our Party Roster menu and check out what our party's like.
We have eight members, including Delita, who I don't think is going to stick around for long given the prologue). Of these, we have six Squires and two Chemists - though these characters aren't bound to their jobs; we can just change them however we like. For now, I'm happy with a three Squire, two Chemist setup. Some tactical games have a focus on making each character an entity in their own right (the HBS Shadowrun games), some tactical games have your entire 'squad' be pure mechanical entities with no character except what you project onto them (XCOM), and it looks like Tactics splits the difference: Ramza and Delita are obviously story-relevant characters, the other 6 characters in our party so far are just mooks without dialogue lines. They have names, but I have yet to remember them.
So how do Jobs work?
Every character starts out as either a Squire or a Chemist. Squire is the 'root job' for 'physical jobs,' and Chemist is the 'root job' for 'magic jobs.' The Chemist itself does not have magic, but it learns the Item command, which characters do not know by default. Once we have reached lv 2 in either Squire or Chemist, we unlock two more 'advanced' jobs. The Squire can thus become a Knight, specializing in close range combat and able to damage enemy equipment, or an Archer, unlocking more powerful ranged attacks. The Chemist can become a White Mage or a Black Mage, which should be familiar to all of us by now.
Much like in V, Jobs can mix and match abilities to some extent; they have access to various Commands as well as Reaction Abilities (which are this game's categorization for stuff like Counterattack), Support Abilities, and Movement Abilities; so a Black Mage could keep the Item command from Chemist. This seems like a system with a lot of potential depth - as much or more as V's job system, potentially - which will take a while to fully come into its own, as there are job level requirements to unlock new jobs. Still, it's easy enough getting into the first advanced jobs; even now after only one battle, I have several characters with job lv 2 who could become Advanced Jobs right away.
The big thing is that… The game doesn't tell us about any jobs beyond Knight/Archer/Black Mage/White Mage. In fact, the tutorial even tells us that "there are many other jobs available to units as well, but you will have to discover their requirements on your own." Which I don't… want to do? I don't want to waste ages blindly leveling Jobs trying to figure out the level gate that will unlock Summoner or whatever. So I'll probably end up looking that up, though I haven't yet. I value blindness in this playthrough but not that highly.
Now the question is: How do Jobs learn Abilities? And that was painfully difficult to sort out, but I eventually found the answer: Those Job Points we earn for Job Actions? They're a currency. Unlike, say, FFVIII's system where we assign each GF an Ability to learn and points go to that Ability, JP goes directly to a 'pool' for this character, and then we can spend it on any given ability out of a menu specific to each job, like so:
This Squire has 219 JP, and Stone costs 90, so they could learn it immediately, but will need to acquire more JP to learn Focus, which costs 300. Fairly straightforward, once it's explained properly! Notably, each spell appears to be its own ability; this is the ability menu for Black Mage:
It keeps going further down, ending in Flare costing a whopping 1000 JP. It looks like the only thing preventing us from rushing the strongest spells early is that they cost so much that it's probably better to just buy Fira when it becomes available rather than hoard JP to reach Firaja? I don't know, I guess we'll see.
…
Also, hm, there's this:
There's a Squire passive ability called JP Boost that increases all JP gain by 50%. So, hm.
Given that JP locks all progress that matters (learning all Abilities, unlocking any Job), this seems like an obvious must-take. On every character. Like, just some quick math: JP Boost costs 250 JP. Flare costs 1000 JP. So, in the course of gathering the JP to learn Flare, a character without JP Boost will earn 1000 JP, whereas a character with JP Boost will earn 1500 JP, repaying the cost of JP Boost twice over, from just one Ability.
So yeah this is just a gimmie. The cost, of course, is in reducing strategic flexibility; a character who has JP Boost equipped is using their only Support Ability slot on it, effectively never engaging with Support Abilities for the purpose of combat, which will greatly reduce character flexibility and the depth of the system. But it's so much JP! This is a trade-off that really feels like it incentivizes the player to make the game less interesting.
But I believe in us. I believe that we're smart enough that we can use JP Boost sometimes, like if we're grinding (if that ends up being a thing we need to do), and taking it off when we want to thoroughly engage with particular combat encounters. Besides, for now, we don't have a Support Ability that this would take the place of.
So for the time being, we're swapping everyone to Squires until they've learned JP Boost, and we'll see where we take it from there.
And with this, we've officially completed the opening of the game, its prologue 'mission' and its first real battle. Ahead of us lies everything else! For now, we'll pause there.
Before we end this first update, though, let's circle back around a little - I promised you a comparison between WotL and the original PSX game at least for the intro, and I intend to deliver.
So let's pull out the ol' DuckStation, and open Final Fantasy Tactics, original flavor.
V. The PSX Intro
The first difference that's immediately noticeable is that the intro movie is a little different - it mostly consists of the camera panning over shots of weapons. The translation is a little more prosaic, but the meaning remains the same:
"A warrior takes sword in hand, clasping a gem to his heart.
Engraving vanishing memories into the sword,
He places finely honed skills into the stone.
Spoken from the sword, handed down from the stone…
Now the story can be told…
SQUARE PRESENTS
The "Zodiac Brave Story."
Then we get the intro menu, same old same old.
However, here comes our first noticeable difference. Older games often had a thing where, if you didn't touch your controller for a while at the intro menu, a video would play out. I assume (though that's only a guess) that this served the same function as screensavers on computer - cathodic screens were susceptible to pixel burnout when left on the same image for too long; the practice has faded since the issue stopped being relevant to modern LCD screens, and indeed if you leave WotL's menu screen alone, nothing happens.
Very often, the video played by these older games was simply the intro movie again. Sometimes, however, devs got funky with it, designing special movies that could only be seen by leaving the intro screen alone for a minute. And this is the case of the original Tactics.
This movie is stylistically fairly simple, using panning shots over maps and still pictures to produce a kinda dynamic feel using only static images, which is just as well - this movie is conveying a lot of information that busy visuals would make hard to parse.
And it's pretty important background information that the WotL version has yet to convey!
Goltana, the Black Lion, on the left; Larg, the White Lion, on the right.
This is a lot of crucial information! I assume the game was going to get around to delivering it eventually, but this does a lot to clarify the basic shape of the nation's politics - Goltanna is the Regent, Larg is the spurned prince who has the Queen's favor. Assuming we end up working for either side, it will likely be Largo's, considering that Golatanna is seen attacking us in the prologue.
With this in mind, we hit New Game. Arazlam (Alazlam in this translation)'s intro monologue is different in the exact wording but not in content; we name Ramza, pick a birth date, and cue the next intro movie - this time, we're seeing actual stuff happening rather than panning shots of still pictures!
The gist is the same - a knight in armor is riding with his party through ruined lands. The CGI is decent but we're clearly still in the FF7 era.
Cue the intro.
Ovelia: "God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice."
Agrias: "Princess Ovelia, let's go."
Ovelia: "Just a moment, Agrias…"
Agrias: "The guards have already arrived."
Priest: "Princess, don't give Agrias trouble. Please hurry…"
[Gaffgarion enters; instead of 'Swordsman,' he is immediately labeled as 'Black Knight.' His name is also spelled with a single F.]
Gafgarion: "What's going on? It's been nearly an hour!"
Agrias: "Don't be rude to the Princess, Gafgarion."
[Ramza and Ladd kneel; Gafgarion bows his head slightly and puts a hand on his heart.]
Gafgarion: "Is this going to be alright, Agrias? This is an urgent issue for us."
Agrias: "So there are rude knights even among the Hokuten?"
Gafgarion: "I'm being more than kind to the guard captains here. Besides, we're mercenaries hired by the Hokuten. I'm not obliged to show respect to you."
Agrias: "What? How dare you!"
Ovelia: "Enough. Let's go."
Priest: "Go with God."
Ovelia: "You too, Simon."
[The wounded knight enters.]
…yeah, that's not… Ideal. Like the first issue is that this is just dripless. The dialogue lacks any real sense of anything but conveying information straightforwardly. Which wouldn't be so bad - this has been the case of most FF dialogue so far - but then there are decisions like leaving 'Hokuten' untranslated, or some of the dialogue feeling like nonsequiturs - "Is this going to be alright, Agrias? This is an urgent issue for us."//"So there are rude knights even among the Hokuten?" seems to be the translator having failed to understand that Gafgarion is offering a half-hearted bow instead of a proper greeting and asking something to the effect of a sarcastic 'Will that be enough for you' before chastising Agrias for wasting time on courtly protocol, so it just comes across as a nonsense exchange. "I'm being more than kind to the guard captains here" also suggests that Gafgarion is saying that he's nice to other people even if he's rude to Agrias, rather than telling her in effect "This is more politeness than you deserve." Gafgarion is being pretty rude in the WotL script (even if he's eventually proven correct), whereas here Agrias just seems like the one who's being weirdly aggro.
Also, the references to 'God' rather than 'the Father' put more emphasis on this being a monotheistic faith with a singular deity, and I'm not sure if that's truly the case of this setting. We'll see going forward.
That said, though, the one weird thing is that WotL is missing the 'Orbonne Monastery' title card. This place is clearly named in the original, but not in the remake. Weird.
The dialogue surrounding the arrival of Duke Goltana's men is similar, though again more pedestrian ('What's wrong with Prince Goltana? He's such an idiot!'), and the sexism of the Goltana Knight is very slightly toned down ("Knave! There's no point in resisting! Just give us the Princess, or that beautiful face of yours will be scarred forever!"). When Agrias tells Gafgarion to not kill the knights, he responds "That's impossible!" without any clear explanation why, which is just weird.
Then there's the bit that nearly redeems the entire script:
Gafgarion has a chant when using Shadowblade.
This rules, I do not understand why you would ever cut this from the new translation.
Now, however, we are presented with a very novel problem:
At the time of this game's release, US and Japanese video games had different standard control schemes. US games used X to confirm and Triangle or Circle to cancel, and Japanese games used Circle to confirm and X to cancel.
This means that I am constantly fucking up my inputs by canceling out of everything I try to do. This ultimately isn't a huge deal because the game is turn-based so as long as I don't confirm a wrong input I can just do it over again, but it's real annoying. I end up just swapping my control scheme in the emulator so that it registers X as Circle just because it's easier.
Other than that the battle proceeds as expected, until…
Delita sneaks in through the back of the Monastery and abducts the Princess. Unlike the WotL version, this isn't done in an FMV; rather it all happens on the battlefield, using the game's standard sprites. There is in fact no transition out of the battle; this starts with our characters all in whatever position they ended the fight in. It feels more… Naturalistic, I suppose?
I suspect this is going to be the start of a trend in which FFT has plot-important events happen 'on the battlefield' using game sprites, whereas WotL uses cell-shaded CGI cutscene. It's, hm. I can't really pronounce myself on which is the better approach, we'll see.
As before, the Princess attempts to resist, Delita punches her in the gut and grabs this body, and then, instead of "Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I.' he delivers this killer line - not to the Princess, but rather to Agrias as she rushes after him:
"Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God." Absolutely brutal. It comes across a lot less as Delita being a hypocrite and more about him just being an indifferent asshole. It's a subtly different characterization! It's also a very good line, granted. Then he leaps off screen with his chocobo, Agrias exclaims "Oh, God" and Ramza wonders at Delita being alive and siding with Goltana, and we transition back to the past.
The Narrator's monologue introducing the basic set-up is, again, subtly different in a way that changes the tone of the setting: Rather than "The loss of the Fifty Years' War saw knights returning from the front stripped of livelihood, their fealty to the Crown and nobility abandoned," it instead says: "Many soldiers who returned from the war, had no jobs, little money, and even less loyalty to the crown." This completely changes the class mechanics at play here! Rather than an issue of destitute nobility, knights who lost their lands/titles/livelihood and turned to banditry, this is an issue of poverty among 'soldiers,' the lower class, who are returning to civilian life and are finding themselves penniless and without available work. This is important because, of course, traisonous knights are merely the enforcement class of the state agitating to seize local control and make the law their own, whereas the rebellion of the working class is the natural and righteous outcome of a class awakening that seeks to end tyrannous monarchical rule-
Ahem.
More annoyingly, the FFT monologue is… Slow. Like… Really, really slow. Like, this paragraph?
Takes nearly a minute to appear, one word at a time. The phrase 'little money' alone takes an agonizing ten seconds to appear, one letter at a time. It's baffling. I literally fast-forwaded through it.
Other than that, the dialogue that follows conveys the same information, though it's less flowery. The 'wain' is thankfully a 'wagon.' Some names are changed - Eagrose is now Igros, the Corpse Brigade are the Death Corps, the apprentices are instead cadets. More bafflingly, the 'thieves routed by our knights' are now 'tortured theives' (sic), which makes them sound a lot more sympathetic! At least until the thief leader speaks up, sounding like even more of a psycho:
Thief: "What's this? Just a bunch of kids! What luck! OK, all we have to do is kill these kids! Then, we can escape! Don't you worry! We'll kill every one of you!"
Introducing some extra confusion, Ramza's lines about Delita not patronizing him says "I'm also a Beoulve," which implies that Delita is himself one, which I'm pretty sure he's not.
The fight proceeds as expected, with one further wrinkle. See this?
When we take out an enemy, they fall where they stood (which incidentally can get pretty annoying, as their body is an obstacle to movement), and a countdown appears over their head, starting at 3 and going down one per turn. This represents the time window we have to raise them with Phoenix Down or magic. If that count goes down to 0…
The enemy dies, and leaves behind either a treasure box, or a crystal. Claiming the treasure box by moving over to it results in us getting an item (here, a Leather Hat), while claiming the crystal…
…huh.
When we claim a crystal, we are given the option to either restore HP and MP completely, or learn an Ability that the enemy knew. This allows us to side-step the Job learning system. Here, Squire Rienhart learned Antidote, one of the Chemist's Item Abilities. From a fallen Squire, my Chemist learned Dash.
I wasn't expecting this to be how the 'memories etched into stone' part of the intro manifests. Every enemy is essentially a skill pinata that you have to kill to get at the juicy Abilities inside.
That's fascinating! And a little grim. I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, this is a really cool reward system. On the other hand, it incentivizes weird behavior, like here, where I ended the fight cornering the poor enemy Chemist and just walling him for two turns so that his friends could dissolve into sweet, sweet Ability juice. This seems like the 'optimal' strategy to pursue would often be to stall the fight as much as possible in order to maximize item and crystal gain, but that could easily make the gameplay more tedious and less fun?
We'll have to see. And with this, we have officially reached the same point in the PSX version as we did in the PSP port!
Ramza: "Why do you continue committing acts like robbery? You wouldn't have died this way if you'd led an honest life."
This concludes the first update of this Final Fantasy Tactics Let's Play. This was fun! I'm actually really excited about this. After the slog that was FF8's gameplay, it feels nice to be looking at a game that seems like it has the potential to be really fun to actually engage with, not just suffer through combat to get at the juicy story beats - even if it might take us some time for this system to fully come into its own from the very basic jobs and abilities it opens with.
Thank you for reading.
Chapter title cards, neat! We are informed that this is 'The Royal Military Akademy at Gariland.' Yes, 'Akademy.'
99% odds this game spells magic as 'magick.'
Apprentice #1: "Another wain was struck last night on its way to Eagrose."
Apprentice #2: "The Corpse Brigade again?"
Ramza: "I wonder where all this leads… Delita, what do you make of this?"
Delita: "I'm not sure. I have my guesses, but… I think Duke Larg is coming to Gariland."
Ramza: "Duke Larg? Why?"
Delita: "Not just the duke. The Marquis Elmdore de Limberry, too."
Ramza: "That's the first I've heard of it. This has not the sound of a state visit."
Delita: "All of Ivalice is in turmoil. The Order's supposed to be keeping things under control, but the fact is, they number too few."
Ramza: "And they mean to bolster their numbers with us?"
Man's Voice: [From outside the room] "All right, everybody, form up!"
So far so political medieval fantasy - there are rumors afoot, dukes and marquis making plays, widespread disorder, knights turned bandits, all that good stuff to set a video game in. Although wain is obnoxious; just say cart, man.
Notably this is a very different tone from any Final Fantasy we've previously had. The closest we ever came to caring about kingdom politics was IV with Baron's internal dissent, but even this was a far cry from internal disorder with dukes fighting one another and princesses being politically important, and casus belli actually mattering. Final Fantasy is largely a series about how singular individuals move the world; it cares about Kings and Emperors and wandering heroes, it's never paid attention to the granularity of internal politics of nations.
But it's looking like this game might actually take place entirely within the Kingdom of Ivalice, rather than leaving within the first five hours to explore the world map and never come back, which would also be extremely novel. And furthermore, so far, the game's setting seem like it's actually going for the 'Generic European Medieval (Secretly Early Modern) Fantasy' vibe that the Final Fantasy series has always (arguably with the exception of I) avoided in favor of weird schizo-tech settings with airships and magitek.
Which is all to say: Even if you strip away the whole 'tactical RPG' angle that makes this game play completely different from all other FFs, it would still make sense why this is a spinoff rather than a mainline entry: Its world building, aesthetic and narrative sensibilities are a complete shift sideways from the series' usual fare.
At this point, a Knight of the Order of the Northern Sky enters and everyone falls into two squares. He addresses the crowd as 'knights apprentice,' so we're seeing Ramza before he quit the order for the unglamorous life of a mercenary. The Order has been tasked with eliminating the Corpse Brigade, a notorious gang of outlaws with a grudge against the Crown, for which the Order will ally with the forces of Duke Larg's royal guard. That's not our job, though; rather, because the Duke will be leaving his castle undefended to join the effort, our job is to literally man the fort, defending the Duke's domain while he's gone from stray brigands.
Before we head there, though, we have our first assignment: a band of thieves was routed by the Order and is fleeing towards Gariland, where we are located. Our job is to intercept them and, well, kill everyone.
We are offered the option to save there, and then we are dumped to this odd menu:
How strange! We are of course provided no explanation and at this point I am refusing to check out the tutorial out of sheer stubborn pique, I want to play the game. We can check Ramza's status, and we can delete him from this tile and move him to another tile. From my memories of FFTA, we're looking at a deployment screen where we decide in what formation to deploy our troops, except in FFTA we get to see what the battlefield will look like while deploying, whereas here we're just deciding based on guesswork, and also we only have one character anyway. So let's start!
Rogue: "What have we here… We moppets, is it? Our luck's went and turned for the better! Aw'right, lads! Cut through these ones and we're good as fled! We'll make quick work of them! And don't be leaving no squealers behind, neither!"
Delita is deployed alongside us, but the rest of the squad is a no-show; I'm guessing they're off-screen fighting the rest of the band elsewhere. Still, we can probably take… What's this… four Squires and a Chemist? Easy mode.
Here, you can see Ramza's movement range in blue, and his action menu showing both Attack and Mettle.
When our turn comes up, we get this exchange between our protagonists:
Delita: "Careful, Ramza! Remember: The well-aimed thrust pierces the mail."
Ramza: "Don't patronize me, Delita! We Beoulves know our way around a battlefield."
Rogue: "Beoulve, was it? Heir to the noble House Beoulve, I'd wager. Looks like we have ourselves some apprentices from the Akademy! Well, highborn moppets is still moppets!"
Ramza: "Lay down your arms or die clutching them! None will mourn your passing."
Rogue: "And you mean to make us do that, then? You're in far over your little heads!"
Harsh, Ramza.
Unfortunately, Ramza's ability to deliver on his taunt is severely curtailed by the fact that, uh…
This no longer being the flash-forward prologue, he is now lv 1 with only 50 HP instead of 151, and almost all of his Mettle commands are gone - he only has Chant, which takes half of his HP in order to heal a teammate by twice that amount.
Also, Delita is another Guest Character: I don't control him, just like I didn't control Gaffgarion and Agrias.
I still head into the battle with full confidence that it wouldn't be set up this way if it wasn't winnable, corner a lady Squire on the rooftops to engage her solo without anyone to backstab me, while Delita takes the central street below. Unfortunately, while Ramza's superior stats make him more than capable of handling his opponent alone, Delita… doesn't fare as well. He is also just a Squire with only a basic attack and Chant. The enemies quickly surround him, and he is now dealing only one attack per turn while taking three… And very quickly the Chemist shows himself to be the most dangerous opponent because its Potion heals 30 HP, which is more than Ramza or Delita can deal in a single attack, allowing the Chemist to completely cancel our progress wearing down the foe.
Delita is first to fall, and then…
But fine. Whatever. We'll try again; this time I'll attempt to isolate and eliminate the Chemist first, cutting off the enemy's healing supply. This will still leave us outnumbered 2:1, but better raw stats should see us to victory.
This does not work. Because I can't control Delita, I can't have my two characters focus down the healer. Ramza is left to make 20-damage attacks on his own, and the Chemist is able to heal himself back to full every turn. Soon, Delita falls, and then I'm left trying to run away faster than the enemies can catch me in hope of defeating them piecemeal, which…
The fact that enemies gain EXP for killing me is just adding insult to injury.
This is not working. I'm clearly missing something here. The game would not present a problem this difficult as its first real battle.
Let's spend more time in the deployment menu to see if we can figure out a solution.
…
Okay, so, when you're in the menu, there are no other visible party members. Nor is there any obvious way to make party members appear. Turns out, you have to open the Status menu, which opens on a page listing Ramza's traits, and then click L1 or R1 so that the page will turn to the next member in our group, which we have, apparently. Then we tab out of the Status menu and we now have that character's sprite hovering above one of the tiles.
In this fashion, we can load up to five characters before the fight.
So.
Yeah.
With five party members plus Delita, we actually have a numerical advantage. More importantly, we now have two Chemists - units with weaker attacks than Squire, but who can use Potions (it has a range of several tiles and is obstructed by terrain like a ranged weapon, so they don't need to hug our Squires but we do need to be mindful of location and spacing), meaning now we have healing, allowing us to wear down the enemy safely. Additionally, not all our Squires have the same starting Mettle abilities; some know Stone, a very basic ranged attacks which consists in literally throwing a stone at the enemy, allowing us to actually deal damage at range, which was previously impossible.
The battle concludes pretty gruesomely - because of the way the game works, killing opponents means we now have a comparative advantage (our guys > their guys), which makes killing the next opponent easier, which means that the end of the fight is us chasing down their fleeing Chemist until we corner him at the edge of the map, surround him, and take turns stabbing him to death.
Ramza: "Honest work would see them die old in bed, yet they choose instead this early grave. Why persist in such folly?"
I don't know, Ramza. Have you considered what could be the reasons that lead someone to banditry? How about that Fifty Year War we just heard about that ravaged the country and left countless knights penniless and without occupation?
We end on a screen that proudly proclaims "THE BATTLE IS WON!" and tells us that we won a 'Bonus Coin' of 500 gil. It's unclear what makes this coin 'bonus'; we are separately rewarded with a loot screen:
2000 Gil, a Mythril Knife, a Phoenix Down, and a Potion. Not bad for a day's work. Being a brutal enforcer of state power sure pays!
Following this fight, we are immediately led to the World Map, and basic instructions about travel. This isn't ye old FF kind of world map, though; it is literally a map.
I fucking knew it, I knew they were going to spell it magick!
The map presents a series of locations. We move Ramza's icon to the next dot on the map, and he crosses that distance and reach the next point. I assume that 'random encounters' will occur in the form of unexpected battles while crossing from one point to another. When we're at a location, we can't actually enter it within the gameplay; rather, each location is a menu, and from that menu, we can select options like shops.
There are no 'town' areas, or 'civilian' areas, or 'no-combat' areas. If the game is anything like FFTA, we will never control Ramza's movements directly outside the context of a battle. Everything in the game that isn't combat is a menu. When we saw that cutscene with the Knight giving out orders? We did not control characters during that bit, they moved entirely on their own. Here in the shop, we don't move Ramza to enter or leave; we select the shop in the menu, dialogue with the shopkeeper opens, and once we click Exit, we are dumped back on the world map. We can't visit Gariland as a town, we can't just walk around anywhere. This game is three things: Menus, dialogue cutscenes, and combat.
It's a very… Pared down experience. But FFT is supposed to have a great story, so I'm holding hope that it doesn't negatively impact the narrative.
IV. Basics of Jobs
So, let's head into our Party Roster menu and check out what our party's like.
We have eight members, including Delita, who I don't think is going to stick around for long given the prologue). Of these, we have six Squires and two Chemists - though these characters aren't bound to their jobs; we can just change them however we like. For now, I'm happy with a three Squire, two Chemist setup. Some tactical games have a focus on making each character an entity in their own right (the HBS Shadowrun games), some tactical games have your entire 'squad' be pure mechanical entities with no character except what you project onto them (XCOM), and it looks like Tactics splits the difference: Ramza and Delita are obviously story-relevant characters, the other 6 characters in our party so far are just mooks without dialogue lines. They have names, but I have yet to remember them.
So how do Jobs work?
Every character starts out as either a Squire or a Chemist. Squire is the 'root job' for 'physical jobs,' and Chemist is the 'root job' for 'magic jobs.' The Chemist itself does not have magic, but it learns the Item command, which characters do not know by default. Once we have reached lv 2 in either Squire or Chemist, we unlock two more 'advanced' jobs. The Squire can thus become a Knight, specializing in close range combat and able to damage enemy equipment, or an Archer, unlocking more powerful ranged attacks. The Chemist can become a White Mage or a Black Mage, which should be familiar to all of us by now.
Much like in V, Jobs can mix and match abilities to some extent; they have access to various Commands as well as Reaction Abilities (which are this game's categorization for stuff like Counterattack), Support Abilities, and Movement Abilities; so a Black Mage could keep the Item command from Chemist. This seems like a system with a lot of potential depth - as much or more as V's job system, potentially - which will take a while to fully come into its own, as there are job level requirements to unlock new jobs. Still, it's easy enough getting into the first advanced jobs; even now after only one battle, I have several characters with job lv 2 who could become Advanced Jobs right away.
The big thing is that… The game doesn't tell us about any jobs beyond Knight/Archer/Black Mage/White Mage. In fact, the tutorial even tells us that "there are many other jobs available to units as well, but you will have to discover their requirements on your own." Which I don't… want to do? I don't want to waste ages blindly leveling Jobs trying to figure out the level gate that will unlock Summoner or whatever. So I'll probably end up looking that up, though I haven't yet. I value blindness in this playthrough but not that highly.
Now the question is: How do Jobs learn Abilities? And that was painfully difficult to sort out, but I eventually found the answer: Those Job Points we earn for Job Actions? They're a currency. Unlike, say, FFVIII's system where we assign each GF an Ability to learn and points go to that Ability, JP goes directly to a 'pool' for this character, and then we can spend it on any given ability out of a menu specific to each job, like so:
This Squire has 219 JP, and Stone costs 90, so they could learn it immediately, but will need to acquire more JP to learn Focus, which costs 300. Fairly straightforward, once it's explained properly! Notably, each spell appears to be its own ability; this is the ability menu for Black Mage:
It keeps going further down, ending in Flare costing a whopping 1000 JP. It looks like the only thing preventing us from rushing the strongest spells early is that they cost so much that it's probably better to just buy Fira when it becomes available rather than hoard JP to reach Firaja? I don't know, I guess we'll see.
…
Also, hm, there's this:
There's a Squire passive ability called JP Boost that increases all JP gain by 50%. So, hm.
Given that JP locks all progress that matters (learning all Abilities, unlocking any Job), this seems like an obvious must-take. On every character. Like, just some quick math: JP Boost costs 250 JP. Flare costs 1000 JP. So, in the course of gathering the JP to learn Flare, a character without JP Boost will earn 1000 JP, whereas a character with JP Boost will earn 1500 JP, repaying the cost of JP Boost twice over, from just one Ability.
So yeah this is just a gimmie. The cost, of course, is in reducing strategic flexibility; a character who has JP Boost equipped is using their only Support Ability slot on it, effectively never engaging with Support Abilities for the purpose of combat, which will greatly reduce character flexibility and the depth of the system. But it's so much JP! This is a trade-off that really feels like it incentivizes the player to make the game less interesting.
But I believe in us. I believe that we're smart enough that we can use JP Boost sometimes, like if we're grinding (if that ends up being a thing we need to do), and taking it off when we want to thoroughly engage with particular combat encounters. Besides, for now, we don't have a Support Ability that this would take the place of.
So for the time being, we're swapping everyone to Squires until they've learned JP Boost, and we'll see where we take it from there.
And with this, we've officially completed the opening of the game, its prologue 'mission' and its first real battle. Ahead of us lies everything else! For now, we'll pause there.
Before we end this first update, though, let's circle back around a little - I promised you a comparison between WotL and the original PSX game at least for the intro, and I intend to deliver.
So let's pull out the ol' DuckStation, and open Final Fantasy Tactics, original flavor.
V. The PSX Intro
The first difference that's immediately noticeable is that the intro movie is a little different - it mostly consists of the camera panning over shots of weapons. The translation is a little more prosaic, but the meaning remains the same:
"A warrior takes sword in hand, clasping a gem to his heart.
Engraving vanishing memories into the sword,
He places finely honed skills into the stone.
Spoken from the sword, handed down from the stone…
Now the story can be told…
SQUARE PRESENTS
The "Zodiac Brave Story."
Then we get the intro menu, same old same old.
However, here comes our first noticeable difference. Older games often had a thing where, if you didn't touch your controller for a while at the intro menu, a video would play out. I assume (though that's only a guess) that this served the same function as screensavers on computer - cathodic screens were susceptible to pixel burnout when left on the same image for too long; the practice has faded since the issue stopped being relevant to modern LCD screens, and indeed if you leave WotL's menu screen alone, nothing happens.
Very often, the video played by these older games was simply the intro movie again. Sometimes, however, devs got funky with it, designing special movies that could only be seen by leaving the intro screen alone for a minute. And this is the case of the original Tactics.
This movie is stylistically fairly simple, using panning shots over maps and still pictures to produce a kinda dynamic feel using only static images, which is just as well - this movie is conveying a lot of information that busy visuals would make hard to parse.
And it's pretty important background information that the WotL version has yet to convey!
Article: The Kingdom of Ivalice; forever guarded by the twin headed lions and by the sun that shines upon them…
A year after the defeat of the 50 Year War,
The King had died from a terminal illness earlier and the prince who succeeded him was only 2 years old.
This meant his guardian would actually reign in his stead as King.
The Queen's elder brother Larg was designated as guardian but, fearing an oppressive reign from the Queen, the parliament ousted the potential prince, appointing instead the King's cousin, Prince Goltana, as the guardian. Prince Goltana and Prince Larg are both respected generals who proved themselves in the 50 Year War.
Prince Goltana had the support of the powerful Nobles but, disenfranchised Nobles and knights clearly supported Prince Larg. The Black Lion symbolizes Prince Goltana and the White Lion symbolizes Prince Larg.
This is the beginning of what will later be known as "The Lion War."
Goltana, the Black Lion, on the left; Larg, the White Lion, on the right.
This is a lot of crucial information! I assume the game was going to get around to delivering it eventually, but this does a lot to clarify the basic shape of the nation's politics - Goltanna is the Regent, Larg is the spurned prince who has the Queen's favor. Assuming we end up working for either side, it will likely be Largo's, considering that Golatanna is seen attacking us in the prologue.
With this in mind, we hit New Game. Arazlam (Alazlam in this translation)'s intro monologue is different in the exact wording but not in content; we name Ramza, pick a birth date, and cue the next intro movie - this time, we're seeing actual stuff happening rather than panning shots of still pictures!
The gist is the same - a knight in armor is riding with his party through ruined lands. The CGI is decent but we're clearly still in the FF7 era.
Cue the intro.
Ovelia: "God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice."
Agrias: "Princess Ovelia, let's go."
Ovelia: "Just a moment, Agrias…"
Agrias: "The guards have already arrived."
Priest: "Princess, don't give Agrias trouble. Please hurry…"
[Gaffgarion enters; instead of 'Swordsman,' he is immediately labeled as 'Black Knight.' His name is also spelled with a single F.]
Gafgarion: "What's going on? It's been nearly an hour!"
Agrias: "Don't be rude to the Princess, Gafgarion."
[Ramza and Ladd kneel; Gafgarion bows his head slightly and puts a hand on his heart.]
Gafgarion: "Is this going to be alright, Agrias? This is an urgent issue for us."
Agrias: "So there are rude knights even among the Hokuten?"
Gafgarion: "I'm being more than kind to the guard captains here. Besides, we're mercenaries hired by the Hokuten. I'm not obliged to show respect to you."
Agrias: "What? How dare you!"
Ovelia: "Enough. Let's go."
Priest: "Go with God."
Ovelia: "You too, Simon."
[The wounded knight enters.]
…yeah, that's not… Ideal. Like the first issue is that this is just dripless. The dialogue lacks any real sense of anything but conveying information straightforwardly. Which wouldn't be so bad - this has been the case of most FF dialogue so far - but then there are decisions like leaving 'Hokuten' untranslated, or some of the dialogue feeling like nonsequiturs - "Is this going to be alright, Agrias? This is an urgent issue for us."//"So there are rude knights even among the Hokuten?" seems to be the translator having failed to understand that Gafgarion is offering a half-hearted bow instead of a proper greeting and asking something to the effect of a sarcastic 'Will that be enough for you' before chastising Agrias for wasting time on courtly protocol, so it just comes across as a nonsense exchange. "I'm being more than kind to the guard captains here" also suggests that Gafgarion is saying that he's nice to other people even if he's rude to Agrias, rather than telling her in effect "This is more politeness than you deserve." Gafgarion is being pretty rude in the WotL script (even if he's eventually proven correct), whereas here Agrias just seems like the one who's being weirdly aggro.
Also, the references to 'God' rather than 'the Father' put more emphasis on this being a monotheistic faith with a singular deity, and I'm not sure if that's truly the case of this setting. We'll see going forward.
That said, though, the one weird thing is that WotL is missing the 'Orbonne Monastery' title card. This place is clearly named in the original, but not in the remake. Weird.
The dialogue surrounding the arrival of Duke Goltana's men is similar, though again more pedestrian ('What's wrong with Prince Goltana? He's such an idiot!'), and the sexism of the Goltana Knight is very slightly toned down ("Knave! There's no point in resisting! Just give us the Princess, or that beautiful face of yours will be scarred forever!"). When Agrias tells Gafgarion to not kill the knights, he responds "That's impossible!" without any clear explanation why, which is just weird.
Then there's the bit that nearly redeems the entire script:
Gafgarion has a chant when using Shadowblade.
This rules, I do not understand why you would ever cut this from the new translation.
Now, however, we are presented with a very novel problem:
At the time of this game's release, US and Japanese video games had different standard control schemes. US games used X to confirm and Triangle or Circle to cancel, and Japanese games used Circle to confirm and X to cancel.
This means that I am constantly fucking up my inputs by canceling out of everything I try to do. This ultimately isn't a huge deal because the game is turn-based so as long as I don't confirm a wrong input I can just do it over again, but it's real annoying. I end up just swapping my control scheme in the emulator so that it registers X as Circle just because it's easier.
Other than that the battle proceeds as expected, until…
Delita sneaks in through the back of the Monastery and abducts the Princess. Unlike the WotL version, this isn't done in an FMV; rather it all happens on the battlefield, using the game's standard sprites. There is in fact no transition out of the battle; this starts with our characters all in whatever position they ended the fight in. It feels more… Naturalistic, I suppose?
I suspect this is going to be the start of a trend in which FFT has plot-important events happen 'on the battlefield' using game sprites, whereas WotL uses cell-shaded CGI cutscene. It's, hm. I can't really pronounce myself on which is the better approach, we'll see.
As before, the Princess attempts to resist, Delita punches her in the gut and grabs this body, and then, instead of "Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I.' he delivers this killer line - not to the Princess, but rather to Agrias as she rushes after him:
"Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God." Absolutely brutal. It comes across a lot less as Delita being a hypocrite and more about him just being an indifferent asshole. It's a subtly different characterization! It's also a very good line, granted. Then he leaps off screen with his chocobo, Agrias exclaims "Oh, God" and Ramza wonders at Delita being alive and siding with Goltana, and we transition back to the past.
The Narrator's monologue introducing the basic set-up is, again, subtly different in a way that changes the tone of the setting: Rather than "The loss of the Fifty Years' War saw knights returning from the front stripped of livelihood, their fealty to the Crown and nobility abandoned," it instead says: "Many soldiers who returned from the war, had no jobs, little money, and even less loyalty to the crown." This completely changes the class mechanics at play here! Rather than an issue of destitute nobility, knights who lost their lands/titles/livelihood and turned to banditry, this is an issue of poverty among 'soldiers,' the lower class, who are returning to civilian life and are finding themselves penniless and without available work. This is important because, of course, traisonous knights are merely the enforcement class of the state agitating to seize local control and make the law their own, whereas the rebellion of the working class is the natural and righteous outcome of a class awakening that seeks to end tyrannous monarchical rule-
Ahem.
More annoyingly, the FFT monologue is… Slow. Like… Really, really slow. Like, this paragraph?
Takes nearly a minute to appear, one word at a time. The phrase 'little money' alone takes an agonizing ten seconds to appear, one letter at a time. It's baffling. I literally fast-forwaded through it.
Other than that, the dialogue that follows conveys the same information, though it's less flowery. The 'wain' is thankfully a 'wagon.' Some names are changed - Eagrose is now Igros, the Corpse Brigade are the Death Corps, the apprentices are instead cadets. More bafflingly, the 'thieves routed by our knights' are now 'tortured theives' (sic), which makes them sound a lot more sympathetic! At least until the thief leader speaks up, sounding like even more of a psycho:
Thief: "What's this? Just a bunch of kids! What luck! OK, all we have to do is kill these kids! Then, we can escape! Don't you worry! We'll kill every one of you!"
Introducing some extra confusion, Ramza's lines about Delita not patronizing him says "I'm also a Beoulve," which implies that Delita is himself one, which I'm pretty sure he's not.
The fight proceeds as expected, with one further wrinkle. See this?
When we take out an enemy, they fall where they stood (which incidentally can get pretty annoying, as their body is an obstacle to movement), and a countdown appears over their head, starting at 3 and going down one per turn. This represents the time window we have to raise them with Phoenix Down or magic. If that count goes down to 0…
The enemy dies, and leaves behind either a treasure box, or a crystal. Claiming the treasure box by moving over to it results in us getting an item (here, a Leather Hat), while claiming the crystal…
…huh.
When we claim a crystal, we are given the option to either restore HP and MP completely, or learn an Ability that the enemy knew. This allows us to side-step the Job learning system. Here, Squire Rienhart learned Antidote, one of the Chemist's Item Abilities. From a fallen Squire, my Chemist learned Dash.
I wasn't expecting this to be how the 'memories etched into stone' part of the intro manifests. Every enemy is essentially a skill pinata that you have to kill to get at the juicy Abilities inside.
That's fascinating! And a little grim. I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, this is a really cool reward system. On the other hand, it incentivizes weird behavior, like here, where I ended the fight cornering the poor enemy Chemist and just walling him for two turns so that his friends could dissolve into sweet, sweet Ability juice. This seems like the 'optimal' strategy to pursue would often be to stall the fight as much as possible in order to maximize item and crystal gain, but that could easily make the gameplay more tedious and less fun?
We'll have to see. And with this, we have officially reached the same point in the PSX version as we did in the PSP port!
Ramza: "Why do you continue committing acts like robbery? You wouldn't have died this way if you'd led an honest life."
This concludes the first update of this Final Fantasy Tactics Let's Play. This was fun! I'm actually really excited about this. After the slog that was FF8's gameplay, it feels nice to be looking at a game that seems like it has the potential to be really fun to actually engage with, not just suffer through combat to get at the juicy story beats - even if it might take us some time for this system to fully come into its own from the very basic jobs and abilities it opens with.
Thank you for reading.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've been waiting for this since you started the series, very glad we're finally here.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
I've waved around the question of 'should I play the PSX emulated version of the game, or WotL' a few times, enough to gather some data points. My overall conclusion from this, having mulled it over, is that while we have at least one very strong defender for the PSX's version's merits (with WotL localization modded in if need be), by weight of numbers both in this thread and in Discord conversations there seemed to be a strong consensus around the PSP version. So I downloaded a PSP emulator.
I then promptly lost several hours playing Dissidia Final Fantasy.
Once I gathered my senses and emerged from the fighting game hole, I played the opening of War of the Lions and put it down. Then I thought to myself, 'I should still play some of the PSX version, to compare this remake to the 'baseline' of the original and its localization,' so I closed the PSP and opened the PSX.
I then lost several hours playing Bushido Blade.
Eventually, I managed to actually wrest myself from Square's fascinating and innovative forays into the fighting game genre to play the opening of the PSX original. I will not be doing simultaneous runs of the game (are you crazy), but today, for this opening update, dear readers, you are graced with a comparison of the two - first, the War of the Lions version. Then, the PSX original.
Let's begin.
II. Opening
No, dammit, that's just Bushido Blade again!!!
Pictured: ADHD Gaming
Seriously though I very loudly snorted at the second Bushido Blade joke.
you thought it was fire emblem not final fantasy tactics smdh casual
How strange! We are of course provided no explanation and at this point I am refusing to check out the tutorial out of sheer stubborn pique, I want to play the game. We can check Ramza's status, and we can delete him from this tile and move him to another tile. From my memories of FFTA, we're looking at a deployment screen where we decide in what formation to deploy our troops, except in FFTA we get to see what the battlefield will look like while deploying, whereas here we're just deciding based on guesswork, and also we only have one character anyway. So let's start!
I simply would've become curious about what the L and R buttons scrolled to and explored the menu before beclowning myself…
Okay, so, when you're in the menu, there are no other visible party members. Nor is there any obvious way to make party members appear. Turns out, you have to open the Status menu, which opens on a page listing Ramza's traits, and then click L1 or R1 so that the page will turn to the next member in our group, which we have, apparently. Then we tab out of the Status menu and we now have that character's sprite hovering above one of the tiles.
In this fashion, we can load up to five characters before the fight.
So.
Yeah.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
Now I'm wondering what other bits of info Omi was supposed to know because of the tutorials that he decided to skip over.
Folks in the thread, I think we've found our new Ribbon joke for the game.
Folks in the thread, I think we've found our new Ribbon joke for the game.
Shinji117
Endless Troller
- Location
- Rokkenjima (Sydney)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...l...i...t...t...l...e.........m...o...n...e...y...More annoyingly, the FFT monologue is… Slow. Like… Really, really slow. Like, this paragraph?
Takes nearly a minute to appear, one word at a time. The phrase 'little money' alone takes an agonizing ten seconds to appear, one letter at a time. It's baffling. I literally fast-forwaded through it.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Regarding the GRRM connection in the retranslation, that was the influence of Alexander O. Smith. Smith had previously worked on Vagrant Story in 1999, the next game from FFT's director Yasumi Matsuno , which was heavily influenced by Metal Gear Solid's movie like cinematography. Matsuno directed Smith to go ham on the translation, resulting in a fascinating mixture of faux Shakespearean and MGS operator speak.
Circle back around and Smith was tasked with backporting the translation style of Vagrant Story (and FFXII) to it's spiritual predecessor.
Personally, I find it fits. Tactics doesn't hide its ambitions toward being Political (tm).
Circle back around and Smith was tasked with backporting the translation style of Vagrant Story (and FFXII) to it's spiritual predecessor.
Personally, I find it fits. Tactics doesn't hide its ambitions toward being Political (tm).
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
It is, in fact, more of a case than ever; there aren't just the two video you saw, there is a total of four. You have two more to see, if you want.
Yep, as I mentioned in the past, the characterization is different in the two versions - subtly here at the start, but eventually it grows hugely so.
WotL is the translation which is in the wrong here, by the way - the correct read of events is that the soldiers weren't paid (due to the costs of war reparations the Kingdom had to face for losing their war), so it's indeed a case of the lower class being left to starve by the nobles.
Also, I think it's important to mention that the WotL version has added extra plot beats into the game in the form of additional mandatory battles (not just optional ones) that contradict the plot and disrupt the pacing. If you keep playing the WotL version I'll point them out when you get there, and if you keep playing the PSX version I'll mention where they would have been, so either way you can get a sense of another reason why I dislike WotL. As for the main reason... well, just compare the JP costs now that you can access both; I'm sure you'll find the difference telling.
Speaking of JP costs!
This, which you correctly identified, is one of the issues that the LFT mod solves - in it, all of the units gain 50% extra JP by default, and the JP Boost ability doesn't exist. So there is no incentive to not using support abilities and the mix-and-matching of them remains more interesting.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- Him/He
Perfect.
The 'wait, there are other characters?' For the first battle thing put me off playing FFT for years until in highschool a new friend said you start with other party members.
Also, l i t t I e m o n e y is an old old meme. There are a few challenge runs and optimizations that make you restart, or even save scum, the opening and it's always a drag.
If nothing else, the psx has some unintentional camp and surprising humor due to various reasons, which makes me fonder of it.
Anyways, half the fun of FFT is figuring out what basic core gameplay system you've ignored dozens of hours into the game, but since you expressed a concern...
The first eightish or so classes have brain dead unlock requirements, unlocked by getting a single class up to level 2-4ish job class.
There are more complex ones that have multiple requirements that you'll want hints to avoid blind frustration, but unless your goal is both grinding for a dozen hours and trying to unlock most classes in the early game, you really really don't need to worry about them.
Just working with what you have should keep you busy for a while and not cause long term problems.
The 'wait, there are other characters?' For the first battle thing put me off playing FFT for years until in highschool a new friend said you start with other party members.
Also, l i t t I e m o n e y is an old old meme. There are a few challenge runs and optimizations that make you restart, or even save scum, the opening and it's always a drag.
If nothing else, the psx has some unintentional camp and surprising humor due to various reasons, which makes me fonder of it.
Anyways, half the fun of FFT is figuring out what basic core gameplay system you've ignored dozens of hours into the game, but since you expressed a concern...
The first eightish or so classes have brain dead unlock requirements, unlocked by getting a single class up to level 2-4ish job class.
There are more complex ones that have multiple requirements that you'll want hints to avoid blind frustration, but unless your goal is both grinding for a dozen hours and trying to unlock most classes in the early game, you really really don't need to worry about them.
Just working with what you have should keep you busy for a while and not cause long term problems.
Last edited:
RogueIce
Noctis Æternæ
- Location
- New Lunar Republic, Equestria
First of all: the "l i t t l e m o n e y" thing is a well-worn meme from this game. Contrary to popular belief, it probably wasn't a dig by underpaid devs but a consequence of the timing system for the dialogue scroll. (Link 1 saying it's probably a Control Code issue and here's Link 2 going into more detail than you ever wanted to know about Control Codes).
Edit: from the comments of the first article:
Also, you're absolutely right that "Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God" is an amazing line.
Also interestingly, there is a translation for the in-engine cutscene in the PSP version, though the scene is overlaid by the FMV. Found that one out on Reddit.
Edit: from the comments of the first article:
Article: The NA version definitely misplaces control codes relative to the JP version. The control code "E2 XX" controls the delay before the next character – but it's generally used for only a single character at the end of a line, and immediately reset to standard ("E2 05") right after. The comma before "little money" is missing the standard delay reset afterward and seems to be processing an end-of-line pause after each character, which is only reset when the next end-of-line sets it back. It's a lot like forgetting to close an HTML tag!
Also, you're absolutely right that "Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God" is an amazing line.
Also interestingly, there is a translation for the in-engine cutscene in the PSP version, though the scene is overlaid by the FMV. Found that one out on Reddit.
Last edited:
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Tactics games are a piece of Final Fantasy history I have limited familiarity with. I didn't have a PS1, and the Tactics games were always something I meant to catch up with...someday, when I was caught up with other stuff. Someday never came, so my closest relationship with FFT was a few occasions playing the game at a friend's house which, hilariously, included the final boss and ending of the game, so out of everything from the tactics games I am familiar with that. Strangely enough, I did play one of the games that FFT is based on: the original Ogre Battle, which looked like this-
-and actually played its fights automatically - the player's role in the game was to move units around the overall map and ensure that you didn't didn't get your star units clobbered.
I like the use of the term 'Ser.' I'm not sure why. I think I always found 'Sir' as an address kind of underwhelming, probably not least because in the Middle Ages of the Internet (around the time when this game was being ported) if someone directed a "Sir" at you it typically meant you were about to be insulted.
I'm less fond of "magick." I liked it way back in the day when it was used in the early Warcraft games, not least because I think adding the 'k' for that harder ending makes the word seem more nasty and gruesome, and magick in Warcraft 2 was very gruesome, not least with that illustration of the death knight dissolving slain enemies I remember to this day. Unfortunately I think it got a bit overused, especially by settings where magic felt too mundane to have the extra glitz.
It's fun to see this stuff and see where Naoki Yoshida, producer of FF14 picked up a few of the things he would fanboy about later, like the use of the term "Corpse Brigade" (a fucking awesome name).
-and actually played its fights automatically - the player's role in the game was to move units around the overall map and ensure that you didn't didn't get your star units clobbered.
I like the use of the term 'Ser.' I'm not sure why. I think I always found 'Sir' as an address kind of underwhelming, probably not least because in the Middle Ages of the Internet (around the time when this game was being ported) if someone directed a "Sir" at you it typically meant you were about to be insulted.
I'm less fond of "magick." I liked it way back in the day when it was used in the early Warcraft games, not least because I think adding the 'k' for that harder ending makes the word seem more nasty and gruesome, and magick in Warcraft 2 was very gruesome, not least with that illustration of the death knight dissolving slain enemies I remember to this day. Unfortunately I think it got a bit overused, especially by settings where magic felt too mundane to have the extra glitz.
It's fun to see this stuff and see where Naoki Yoshida, producer of FF14 picked up a few of the things he would fanboy about later, like the use of the term "Corpse Brigade" (a fucking awesome name).
Last edited:
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
OK, Omi's gotten to FFT. No force on earth could stop me from gushing talking about this game.
Height actually matters for archers.
Also, #1 rule of FFT: Have multiple saves, in separate slots.
Spells like Haste and Slow will further impact how much CT you get per tick.
Almost.
No but seriously in general the PSP translation is superior.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but you can use a mod to get the PSP war of the lions translation on the original PS1 game. This is important for two main reasons:
1) The PSP version has massive issues whenever you cast a spell. Frame tearing and bugged sound that doesn't synch properly with the slowed animations. This is extremely annoying, and downright painful for some things (like summons)
2) Lower quality audio.
Yeah, no need to fuss with menus. Just use L1/R1 to cycle units on this screen. It's very simple. I think you just got impatient and didn't try to experiment the first time which caused...issues.
There's a bit of funkiness going on with the translation. I think the original better captures what's going on (conscripted soldiers getting fucked over by the state) even if the way the PSP version uses language to convey information is superior in this particular instance.
There is also, in fact, a second movie that will play if you let the game continue to run on the title screen which introduces all the classes and some monsters. And yet another fantastic music track to accompany it (even if it gets a little repetitive. The melody is great and the orchestration is outstanding)
For the record, there are no bad tracks in the FFT OST. I adore every single one.
I'm...reasonably sure the PSP version has them too. Their use is completely chance based (I notice you didn't mention Agrias doing the chant for Stasis Sword), so you just might have gotten unlucky on the PSP version.
I will tell you this right now, for free:
Height actually matters for archers.
Also, #1 rule of FFT: Have multiple saves, in separate slots.
OK, chat, should we warn him?
tl;dr: You have a speed stat. Every time the counter ticks, you get CT equal to your speed. Once a character gets to 100 CT, it's their turn.
Spells like Haste and Slow will further impact how much CT you get per tick.
It's a good enough line that I almost forgive them for dropping the "blame yourself or god" line.
Almost.
No but seriously in general the PSP translation is superior.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but you can use a mod to get the PSP war of the lions translation on the original PS1 game. This is important for two main reasons:
1) The PSP version has massive issues whenever you cast a spell. Frame tearing and bugged sound that doesn't synch properly with the slowed animations. This is extremely annoying, and downright painful for some things (like summons)
2) Lower quality audio.
Oh my god.
Oh my fucking god.
Yeah, no need to fuss with menus. Just use L1/R1 to cycle units on this screen. It's very simple. I think you just got impatient and didn't try to experiment the first time which caused...issues.
I think you're going to love talking about the class politics of this game. There's a fake quote which I'll bring up later, I think you'll crack up when you see it because it's just completely perfect.
There's a bit of funkiness going on with the translation. I think the original better captures what's going on (conscripted soldiers getting fucked over by the state) even if the way the PSP version uses language to convey information is superior in this particular instance.
It also has a bitchin' cue (bagpipes!!!), and good establishment of motifs that will be used throughout the game.
There is also, in fact, a second movie that will play if you let the game continue to run on the title screen which introduces all the classes and some monsters. And yet another fantastic music track to accompany it (even if it gets a little repetitive. The melody is great and the orchestration is outstanding)
For the record, there are no bad tracks in the FFT OST. I adore every single one.
Every single spell in the game has a chant.
I'm...reasonably sure the PSP version has them too. Their use is completely chance based (I notice you didn't mention Agrias doing the chant for Stasis Sword), so you just might have gotten unlucky on the PSP version.
Fun fact, if you're given a list just pick the last skill and you'll get all the skills.
Last edited:
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've heard this said, but O. Smith doesn't appear to have worked on War of the Lions? He worked on Tactics Advance (which makes me wonder how the game's script would read in EN, as I played it in FR myself) and Tactics A2, but WotL is not listed anywhere in his credits page. Rather, Wikipedia says "Translating the game's script was assigned to Joe Reeder, who pulled in fellow translator Tom Slattery after becoming impressed with some of his internal work at Square Enix.[32] Both worked on the game, alternating between each other translating scenes until Reeder had to leave the project to work on Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings and Slattery became head translator."
Tom Slattery worked on several handheld ports of older FF games - his was the daunting task of retranslating Woolsey's VI script, and he's the one who gave us "THE FROZEN WINDS OF HELL'S NINTH CIRCLE COULD NOT PENETRATE THIS CLOAK OF FLAME I WEAR" from the IV DS port, so he definitely shares some stylistic sensibilities with O. Smith. I totally believe that O. Smith's work influenced the WotL script, it's just that he doesn't appear to have personally worked on it at any point.
Quoting Slattery himself on the translation process:
- Location
- Canada
Nope
PSX has them in very bad Engrish, but WotL doesn't have them at all.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Don't, I'm sure he'll figure it out eventually, and it'll be fun to see the reaction when it happens. Same as with all the other mechanics.
It has been mentioned, yes, repeatedly. I think the mod in question is called "FFT Complete", the one that replaces just the translation and nothing else, but there's so many variants, I might be mistaken.
Last edited:
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Big Crowley fans I take it?
Anyway, while Omi went into the issues with the original PS1 translation, a problem I'm having with the PSP translation is it kinda makes most of the characters' dialogue samey-sounding, like you'd need context and their portraits to tell everyone apart (Gaffgarion and some Delita lines being an exception). At least being a game means this isn't as big an issue as it would be in a book, where Same Voice Syndrome can be a real hurdle