Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hey, Welsh has actual sense to its orthography, you can't blame it for those abominations. They're pure 'this man does not speak or read English but has Strong Opinions'.
Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 5.A: End of Chapter 1
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hear ye, hear ye! 'Tis the year of our lord 2024, and it has come to pass that Ramza of House Beoulve met with tragedy most dire.
The Story So Far: The Kingdom of Ivalice is fresh off the Fifty Years War, a bloody conflict that ended in a stalemate and left it broken, swept by plague, poverty, and discontent among both common people and nobles. The King is dying, a succession crisis is in the making, and in this picture Ramza of House Beoulve, a knight apprentice in the esteemed Order of the Northern Sky, is trying to keep up the honor of his family by following in the footsteps of his famous and respected older brothers. He and his childhood friend Delita are now on the hunt for the last remnants of the rebellious Corpse Brigade, who abducted Delita's sister Tietra. After defeating the Folles siblings, only a scattered few members of the Brigade remain, holed up in their fortress of Ziekden where they hold Tietra hostage!
Having prevailed over Wiegraf Folles, we now stand on the cusp of freeing Delita's sister. The Ziekden Fortress is the only node left ahead of us.
However, considering that 1) Wiegraf was kicking our ass, 2) We have some classes unlocked, I decide to take a little break to do some random fighting and test out the Summoner, so we backtrack a bit. This'll take us a few weeks of in-game time but I've been assured there are no time sensitive triggers so Tietra will just have to wait for us.
Osric swaps over from Time Mage to Summoner, retaining his Black Magicks, and Gillian finally graduates from Chemist to White Mage. It's a move I've resisted for a long time because Chemist is so useful, but ultimately there's no other character for me to foist White Mage on in the 'main' party I've been taking on missions, so might as well explore the White Mage line. The Summon has the same weird horn-like headgear it did in III and V; I feel like someone explained to me what it was inspired by already but I have forgotten it.
…
Summoner isn't getting any summons yet, though. This is its Ability menu:
Each individual summon is an ability to learn with JP, all the way to Bahamut; but the only one we currently have enough JP to learn is Moogle, which is a cheap healing summon, and I already have a healer; I want the big, expensive, damage summons. And that means we'll be taking Osric for a couple of battles as a Summoner with no actual Summon, relying on Black Magicks instead. It's just one of these weird behaviors the game incentivizes sometimes.
We also teach Ramza Shockwave, the Monk's distant hitting move that causes us so much grief in the Wiegraf battle. Keep an eye on it.
On the way to finding some random encounters, we go back to town and hit up the Tavern for some Rumors.
Long story short, the news of the king's improved health were (predictably) a smokescreen to try and reassure the public, and he is not long for this world. The Corpse Brigade has been almost entirely wiped out; we get an idea of the numbers involved in all this fighting with words that around 700 Corpse Brigade members were captured, and 3,000 killed. Which, yeah, puts their total number at around those of a brigade, and tells us that this was much more than a couple hundred bandits hiding in the mountains; you can't sustain three thousand troops without a bunch of infrastructure, camp followers, resource production - 'living off the land' (ie looting peasants while being constantly on the move) can only take you so far. For all intents and purposes this was a breakaway state inside Ivalice. It also reinforces that most of the fighting happened off-screen, involving the armies of 'all four' great knightly orders (presumably there is an Order of the Eastern Sky and Western Sky we never heard about), while our characters are the medieval equivalent of a spec ops team sneaking through enemy lines to deliver surgical strike and eliminate leaders or take fortified positions.
Battles with new jobs are always kind of rocky as I need to adjust to a change in my abilities and stats. I gave Gillian White Magicks and Items, and that means she no longer has Black Magicks like she did as a Chemist, so I've lost more offensive power than I anticipated; Gillian is basically just twiddling her thumbs on any turn a character doesn't require healing. Osric takes a dive towards the end of the battle after a nasty surprise: Once all but one enemy were dead, I locked down the last to wait for the others to turn into crystal/treasure chests, something I don't normally do because I don't want to drag fights out until I get bored but decided to do just the once… And was immediately punished when it turns out Skeletons can revive themselves when their counter hits 0 instead of dying. So a Skeleton popped back up and hit our boy for a KO. That was mean and rude.
Our next battle after that is nearly a complete disaster because I fucked up my input at the roster screen and started the fight with 4 characters instead of 5.
Pain.
We salvage things anyway, and this battle unlocks enough JP for Osric to learn a damage summon; I pick Ramuh, because thunder is the one element that doesn't seem to get fucked over by the weather.
Oh that's so fucking cool.
Summons are incredibly high production value, with lavish custom sprites for the summoned entity taking up a chunk of the screen in the sky, and everything shaking and the camera panning around as Ramuh unleashes lightning in a much wider area, and with much higher damage, than any of our previous spells. Summoning seems to beat Black Magick for damage handily, with a correspondingly lower Speed and MP cost - and perhaps even more importantly, it does not affect friendly targets. I can blast the enemy with Judgment Bolt while Ramza is in melee range and he won't take any damage. It's perfect. I never want to use anything else.
I do wonder about the lore implications though - we're introduced to Summoner without any explanation of what they reflect within the settings and what summons are, and the fact that they're unlocked with JP suggests that we may not end up learning some Summons by beating up spirit entities the way we did in other games? I actually do wonder if the game has more than 'humans' and 'monsters' in its roster - are we ever going to end up fighting divine entities or running into non-human races? Advance's Ivalice had humans, No Mou, Bangaa, Moogles and Viera all living side by side, and I'm aware that the XIV version of Ivalice is where Viera come from, so… Maybe?
Incidentally, that desert map and that mountain map are the random encounter versions of Zeklaus Desert and Fovoham Windflats - I didn't realize the game would have its own variants of the map. They also have their own encounter tables, featuring returning FF staples like the Piscodemon and the Giant Winged Eyeball, but sadly we have enough on our plate with the main story and can't really get into the intricacies of these maps and encounters.
With three new battles under our belt, Ramuh, Cura, and Shockwave added to our arsenal, I feel fairly confident about tackling the Ziekden Fortress, so let's head there next.
Things instantly start looking bad when the game once again only allows me to take four party members instead of five, and asks me to split them into two separate squads. But let's power through with reckless confidence.
Gragoroth: "Back whence you came! Quick as shadows, or this one's blood makes crimson snow! Do not think to try my patience! This keep packs such a store of powder as you could scarce imagine! More than enough to deliver the lot of you to the Father's keeping, should your feet lack proper haste!"
Zalbaag: "The Order of the Northern Sky yields not before the braying of rogues!"
[Ramza and Delita enter.]
Ramza: "Lord Brother! Argath!"
Delita: "Tietra!"
Tietra: "Delita-!"
Gragoroth: "Withdraw at once! I'll not warn you again!"
And there it is. Base treachery. As we suspected, Ramza's brothers' reassurances that they would not attack as long as Tietra was in danger were but lies meant to dissuade him from acting while they took matters into their own hand. Zalbaag himself, the 'cool' older brother, the friendly one who acted as if Delita was a brother to him, is leading the assault.
None of this even seems necessary. The Corpse Brigade is routed, Gragoroth is alone, the surviving bandits holed up in Ziekden have likely been killed. There's no strategic reason to push the matter; only the desire to finalize the victory, to secure the win, to be able to say no enemy officer escaped.
Given the extreme circumstances he's in, Gragoroth's double threat here is about as good as he can: He effectively has a double layer of 'you wouldn't murder a Beoulve girl and a child, would you' and 'if that doesn't work I'll just blow us all up' is hitting that double combo of appeal to decency and appeal to practicality. It's a good threat!
I don't think Gargoroth is a very good person. I don't think anyone who takes a child hostage can be. With that said, I think it's also kind of an open question whether he could actually go through with his threat. He took Tietra hostage out of desperation, expecting that she would 'buy them her freedom,' not planning on cold-blooded murder. Would he actually be able to kill her if the others try him?
Well, he doesn't think he will have to, does he? That's the point of all this: "I'm an evil blood-thirsty brigand and I will totally kill this child if you take even one step forward, but also I won't have to, because you're nobility and she's of your blood so you would never actually try and call my bluff, and if you did I would just blow us all up to the sky so there's no point." It's a desperation maneuvre by someone who has reason to think it will work.
There are two stories people tell each other and themselves about who they are. One is that the Corpse Brigade are cold-hearted brigands without moral qualms, fully willing to shed the blood of a child without hesitation. The other is that nobles are bound by honor and kinship, that they would not harm one or their blood, nor one, even a commoner, whom they've taken in as family, whom they've sworn to protect; they are bound by rules, by decency, by, in all the meanings of the word, nobility. Gargoroth is playing on both these stories to try and see his path out of this life-or-death situation.
But at least one of these stories is a lie.
Zalbaag gives the order. Argath produces a crossbow and fires. Tietra falls.
The dramatic, military music that played until now cuts off, replaced with silence.
Gargoroth stands, dumbstruck, as the girl's body slips from his grasp. He takes a step back, and remarkably, his sprite is still in the same 'holding a person' position it was when he was holding Tietra as he exclaims, "Gods have mercy…"
I don't know if Gargoroth would have hurt Tietra if push had come to shove and he felt he had no choice. Certainly, he seems paralyzed with shock that others did it for him. He is too surprised to defend himself or turn and run.
Argath, saying nothing, showing no hesitation, surprise, or remorse, reloads and fires again, hitting Gargoroth who falls to the ground, though not all the way though - still alive, for now.
Tietra tells Delita she's sorry. Delita stands in shock, calls out her name, and falls to his knees. In the snow.
Just then, a new Knight of the Order approaches.
Northern Sky Knight: "Lord Commander! More enemies scale the pass. Two score, mayhap three. A man of Wiegraf's look moves among them!"
Zalbaag: "Very well. We go to greet them at once. I leave the rest to you, Argath."
[Zalbaag turns around and leaves.]
Gargoroth: "Curse the lot of you…"
[Gargorth proceeds to slowly crawl into the inside of the keep.]
Zalbaag has no words for Delita, for Tietra, even for Ramza. None of this fazes him at all.
It could be that Argath tried to shoot Gargoroth, but Tietra was in the way. It could be that he deliberately took this opportunity to avenge himself of the humiliation dealt by Delita on his sister. It doesn't matter. Whether or it was on purpose, he treats it all with complete indifference. Killing Tietra, whether on purpose or not, is of no more consequence to him than any other casualty of the battle against the Corpse Brigade.
Nor was it of any more import to Zalbaag. This is the ultimate treachery of Ramza's relatives. He was fooled into believing that they cared in the same way that he did. That they saw Delita and Tietra as family the same way he did, that the difference of class was something they too overlooked when it came to those closest to them.
He was wrong.
…
But I think Zalbaag and Dycedarg were wrong as well, in a different way. They may have ambivalent feelings towards their half-brother, but they do seem to think he is valuable, a skilled warrior who bears their father's name and legacy. He's a child, who needs to be protected from his own foolish ideas like 'my commoner friend's life matters', but until further evidence I don't really buy the suggestion that was put forward earlier that they're trying to get him killed.
I think they don't realize that there is no coming back from this; that Ramza cannot ever come back to Eagrose as their brother willing to continue to serve their family, no matter what else happens here today.
Delita stands up and step towards Argath, who himself steps forward - at the top of a small snowy hill, placing himself literally above Delita, physically higher than him just as he believes he is figuratively higher than him.
Argath: "And where do you presume to go, Delita?"
Delita: "You whoreson dog!"
Argath: "It is to be a fight, then? I'm only too happy to oblige!"
Ramza: "Zalbaag… Dycedarg… How could you?"
Argath: "Come! I will show you that common blood makes naught but a common man!"
And there it is. Argath calls forth the forces of the Order of the Northern Sky, who are all too happy to step forward and fight us, their allies, their lord commander's brother, without any objection or qualm. This final battle of the Corpse Brigade arc will not be fought against the Corpse Brigade, but against our very own Order.
Ramza: "Why did you do it, Argath? What moved your hand?"
Argath: "Your lord brother's orders, Ramza. What else? Would you have had us kneel before them, and offer up the Order's honor in exchange for the life of some common wench?"
Ramza: "She was Delita's sister!"
Argath: "Is it not time you awoke to the fact that we are different from them? They are of lesser birth, and so meant to play lesser roles in life! Such is the nature of fate, Ramza! That commoner and his sister ought never have been here at all! Had they been mongering flowers on some street corner, she would yet live."
Our objective this time is to defeat Argath, and that's what I'm setting out to do, because this is not a battle I can win through conventional attrition. Our opposition is made up of two Black Mages, three Knights, and Argath, who fights us as a Knight with Equip Crossbow. This is a 6 v 5, we don't control Delita, and Delita is lv 3, making him incredibly vulnerable. Plus, our starting positions are dogshit. Squad 1 starts out in the open at lower elevation staring at a bunch of Black Mages, while Squad 2 is stuck there:
Completely cut off from the main party, stuck behind a wall, at least two turns away from even coming within range of the enemy. Part of this is because I placed them wrong - it would have been possible to place them in the one-tile-wide alley to the side - but I couldn't know that because the game tells you to position your units without showing you the map which is one of the most infuriating things about its encounter design.
Let's get this over with.
We open with a strong showing for Shockwave; you can see just how utterly ridiculous its range is, basically being able to hit across the entire map in the cardinal directions. This allows Ramza to move up his full range and immediately blast Argath. This triggers dialogue, which will save for later.
In case you're wondering, yes. Tietra's body will remain up on that bridge the entire battle, a silent testament to the tragedy unfolding.
The good news is that Argath has to contend with the same weird range factors as an Archer, and that this gets him within range of Delita to punish. So far, things are going well! We're hitting our high value target from multiple directions at once, the enemy is coming into our range of his own free will, this is fine.
Then the Black Mages get their move.
There's not much to say there. They both cast Fira for enormous amounts of damage, take out Ramza instantly and nearly kill my Thief, and Delita is so severely injured he starts running away on his next turn, becoming useless to me. The damage they have is insane compared to what Osric is capable of; is it just the jump from Fire to Fira? They actually hit Argath in the process, but he has enough HP to tank it.
Next is just scrambling to make up for the blow. Raise Ramza with a Phoenix Down, have him use a Hi-Potion on himself; meanwhile Osric and Gillian are still stuck in a back alley trying to get past a single knight, completely useless to the fight. I've wasted an entire turn and the BLMs go again, killing Ramza again.
Osric is getting stabbed, which is less than ideal.
I barely manage to bring Gillian over to the main battle in time to start raising Ramza again, and she just gets hit by more black magic, taking her and Delita both out in one fell swoop.
Tietra actually has a status window, but it is entirely blank.
That's it. Osric is the last of my characters still standing, and his only commands are Summon and Black Magic. He is fucking toast. I try a hail mary of having him summon Ramuh in the middle of the main enemy formation, hoping against hope that this takes out Argath, but it's futile.
Argath shoots him before he can cast.
...
Let's take a break for image count and reconvene.
The Story So Far: The Kingdom of Ivalice is fresh off the Fifty Years War, a bloody conflict that ended in a stalemate and left it broken, swept by plague, poverty, and discontent among both common people and nobles. The King is dying, a succession crisis is in the making, and in this picture Ramza of House Beoulve, a knight apprentice in the esteemed Order of the Northern Sky, is trying to keep up the honor of his family by following in the footsteps of his famous and respected older brothers. He and his childhood friend Delita are now on the hunt for the last remnants of the rebellious Corpse Brigade, who abducted Delita's sister Tietra. After defeating the Folles siblings, only a scattered few members of the Brigade remain, holed up in their fortress of Ziekden where they hold Tietra hostage!
Having prevailed over Wiegraf Folles, we now stand on the cusp of freeing Delita's sister. The Ziekden Fortress is the only node left ahead of us.
However, considering that 1) Wiegraf was kicking our ass, 2) We have some classes unlocked, I decide to take a little break to do some random fighting and test out the Summoner, so we backtrack a bit. This'll take us a few weeks of in-game time but I've been assured there are no time sensitive triggers so Tietra will just have to wait for us.
Osric swaps over from Time Mage to Summoner, retaining his Black Magicks, and Gillian finally graduates from Chemist to White Mage. It's a move I've resisted for a long time because Chemist is so useful, but ultimately there's no other character for me to foist White Mage on in the 'main' party I've been taking on missions, so might as well explore the White Mage line. The Summon has the same weird horn-like headgear it did in III and V; I feel like someone explained to me what it was inspired by already but I have forgotten it.
…
Summoner isn't getting any summons yet, though. This is its Ability menu:
Each individual summon is an ability to learn with JP, all the way to Bahamut; but the only one we currently have enough JP to learn is Moogle, which is a cheap healing summon, and I already have a healer; I want the big, expensive, damage summons. And that means we'll be taking Osric for a couple of battles as a Summoner with no actual Summon, relying on Black Magicks instead. It's just one of these weird behaviors the game incentivizes sometimes.
We also teach Ramza Shockwave, the Monk's distant hitting move that causes us so much grief in the Wiegraf battle. Keep an eye on it.
On the way to finding some random encounters, we go back to town and hit up the Tavern for some Rumors.
Long story short, the news of the king's improved health were (predictably) a smokescreen to try and reassure the public, and he is not long for this world. The Corpse Brigade has been almost entirely wiped out; we get an idea of the numbers involved in all this fighting with words that around 700 Corpse Brigade members were captured, and 3,000 killed. Which, yeah, puts their total number at around those of a brigade, and tells us that this was much more than a couple hundred bandits hiding in the mountains; you can't sustain three thousand troops without a bunch of infrastructure, camp followers, resource production - 'living off the land' (ie looting peasants while being constantly on the move) can only take you so far. For all intents and purposes this was a breakaway state inside Ivalice. It also reinforces that most of the fighting happened off-screen, involving the armies of 'all four' great knightly orders (presumably there is an Order of the Eastern Sky and Western Sky we never heard about), while our characters are the medieval equivalent of a spec ops team sneaking through enemy lines to deliver surgical strike and eliminate leaders or take fortified positions.
Battles with new jobs are always kind of rocky as I need to adjust to a change in my abilities and stats. I gave Gillian White Magicks and Items, and that means she no longer has Black Magicks like she did as a Chemist, so I've lost more offensive power than I anticipated; Gillian is basically just twiddling her thumbs on any turn a character doesn't require healing. Osric takes a dive towards the end of the battle after a nasty surprise: Once all but one enemy were dead, I locked down the last to wait for the others to turn into crystal/treasure chests, something I don't normally do because I don't want to drag fights out until I get bored but decided to do just the once… And was immediately punished when it turns out Skeletons can revive themselves when their counter hits 0 instead of dying. So a Skeleton popped back up and hit our boy for a KO. That was mean and rude.
Our next battle after that is nearly a complete disaster because I fucked up my input at the roster screen and started the fight with 4 characters instead of 5.
Pain.
We salvage things anyway, and this battle unlocks enough JP for Osric to learn a damage summon; I pick Ramuh, because thunder is the one element that doesn't seem to get fucked over by the weather.
Oh that's so fucking cool.
Summons are incredibly high production value, with lavish custom sprites for the summoned entity taking up a chunk of the screen in the sky, and everything shaking and the camera panning around as Ramuh unleashes lightning in a much wider area, and with much higher damage, than any of our previous spells. Summoning seems to beat Black Magick for damage handily, with a correspondingly lower Speed and MP cost - and perhaps even more importantly, it does not affect friendly targets. I can blast the enemy with Judgment Bolt while Ramza is in melee range and he won't take any damage. It's perfect. I never want to use anything else.
I do wonder about the lore implications though - we're introduced to Summoner without any explanation of what they reflect within the settings and what summons are, and the fact that they're unlocked with JP suggests that we may not end up learning some Summons by beating up spirit entities the way we did in other games? I actually do wonder if the game has more than 'humans' and 'monsters' in its roster - are we ever going to end up fighting divine entities or running into non-human races? Advance's Ivalice had humans, No Mou, Bangaa, Moogles and Viera all living side by side, and I'm aware that the XIV version of Ivalice is where Viera come from, so… Maybe?
Incidentally, that desert map and that mountain map are the random encounter versions of Zeklaus Desert and Fovoham Windflats - I didn't realize the game would have its own variants of the map. They also have their own encounter tables, featuring returning FF staples like the Piscodemon and the Giant Winged Eyeball, but sadly we have enough on our plate with the main story and can't really get into the intricacies of these maps and encounters.
With three new battles under our belt, Ramuh, Cura, and Shockwave added to our arsenal, I feel fairly confident about tackling the Ziekden Fortress, so let's head there next.
Things instantly start looking bad when the game once again only allows me to take four party members instead of five, and asks me to split them into two separate squads. But let's power through with reckless confidence.
Gragoroth: "Back whence you came! Quick as shadows, or this one's blood makes crimson snow! Do not think to try my patience! This keep packs such a store of powder as you could scarce imagine! More than enough to deliver the lot of you to the Father's keeping, should your feet lack proper haste!"
Zalbaag: "The Order of the Northern Sky yields not before the braying of rogues!"
[Ramza and Delita enter.]
Ramza: "Lord Brother! Argath!"
Delita: "Tietra!"
Tietra: "Delita-!"
Gragoroth: "Withdraw at once! I'll not warn you again!"
And there it is. Base treachery. As we suspected, Ramza's brothers' reassurances that they would not attack as long as Tietra was in danger were but lies meant to dissuade him from acting while they took matters into their own hand. Zalbaag himself, the 'cool' older brother, the friendly one who acted as if Delita was a brother to him, is leading the assault.
None of this even seems necessary. The Corpse Brigade is routed, Gragoroth is alone, the surviving bandits holed up in Ziekden have likely been killed. There's no strategic reason to push the matter; only the desire to finalize the victory, to secure the win, to be able to say no enemy officer escaped.
Given the extreme circumstances he's in, Gragoroth's double threat here is about as good as he can: He effectively has a double layer of 'you wouldn't murder a Beoulve girl and a child, would you' and 'if that doesn't work I'll just blow us all up' is hitting that double combo of appeal to decency and appeal to practicality. It's a good threat!
I don't think Gargoroth is a very good person. I don't think anyone who takes a child hostage can be. With that said, I think it's also kind of an open question whether he could actually go through with his threat. He took Tietra hostage out of desperation, expecting that she would 'buy them her freedom,' not planning on cold-blooded murder. Would he actually be able to kill her if the others try him?
Well, he doesn't think he will have to, does he? That's the point of all this: "I'm an evil blood-thirsty brigand and I will totally kill this child if you take even one step forward, but also I won't have to, because you're nobility and she's of your blood so you would never actually try and call my bluff, and if you did I would just blow us all up to the sky so there's no point." It's a desperation maneuvre by someone who has reason to think it will work.
There are two stories people tell each other and themselves about who they are. One is that the Corpse Brigade are cold-hearted brigands without moral qualms, fully willing to shed the blood of a child without hesitation. The other is that nobles are bound by honor and kinship, that they would not harm one or their blood, nor one, even a commoner, whom they've taken in as family, whom they've sworn to protect; they are bound by rules, by decency, by, in all the meanings of the word, nobility. Gargoroth is playing on both these stories to try and see his path out of this life-or-death situation.
But at least one of these stories is a lie.
Zalbaag gives the order. Argath produces a crossbow and fires. Tietra falls.
The dramatic, military music that played until now cuts off, replaced with silence.
Gargoroth stands, dumbstruck, as the girl's body slips from his grasp. He takes a step back, and remarkably, his sprite is still in the same 'holding a person' position it was when he was holding Tietra as he exclaims, "Gods have mercy…"
I don't know if Gargoroth would have hurt Tietra if push had come to shove and he felt he had no choice. Certainly, he seems paralyzed with shock that others did it for him. He is too surprised to defend himself or turn and run.
Argath, saying nothing, showing no hesitation, surprise, or remorse, reloads and fires again, hitting Gargoroth who falls to the ground, though not all the way though - still alive, for now.
Tietra tells Delita she's sorry. Delita stands in shock, calls out her name, and falls to his knees. In the snow.
Just then, a new Knight of the Order approaches.
Northern Sky Knight: "Lord Commander! More enemies scale the pass. Two score, mayhap three. A man of Wiegraf's look moves among them!"
Zalbaag: "Very well. We go to greet them at once. I leave the rest to you, Argath."
[Zalbaag turns around and leaves.]
Gargoroth: "Curse the lot of you…"
[Gargorth proceeds to slowly crawl into the inside of the keep.]
Zalbaag has no words for Delita, for Tietra, even for Ramza. None of this fazes him at all.
It could be that Argath tried to shoot Gargoroth, but Tietra was in the way. It could be that he deliberately took this opportunity to avenge himself of the humiliation dealt by Delita on his sister. It doesn't matter. Whether or it was on purpose, he treats it all with complete indifference. Killing Tietra, whether on purpose or not, is of no more consequence to him than any other casualty of the battle against the Corpse Brigade.
Nor was it of any more import to Zalbaag. This is the ultimate treachery of Ramza's relatives. He was fooled into believing that they cared in the same way that he did. That they saw Delita and Tietra as family the same way he did, that the difference of class was something they too overlooked when it came to those closest to them.
He was wrong.
…
But I think Zalbaag and Dycedarg were wrong as well, in a different way. They may have ambivalent feelings towards their half-brother, but they do seem to think he is valuable, a skilled warrior who bears their father's name and legacy. He's a child, who needs to be protected from his own foolish ideas like 'my commoner friend's life matters', but until further evidence I don't really buy the suggestion that was put forward earlier that they're trying to get him killed.
I think they don't realize that there is no coming back from this; that Ramza cannot ever come back to Eagrose as their brother willing to continue to serve their family, no matter what else happens here today.
Delita stands up and step towards Argath, who himself steps forward - at the top of a small snowy hill, placing himself literally above Delita, physically higher than him just as he believes he is figuratively higher than him.
Argath: "And where do you presume to go, Delita?"
Delita: "You whoreson dog!"
Argath: "It is to be a fight, then? I'm only too happy to oblige!"
Ramza: "Zalbaag… Dycedarg… How could you?"
Argath: "Come! I will show you that common blood makes naught but a common man!"
And there it is. Argath calls forth the forces of the Order of the Northern Sky, who are all too happy to step forward and fight us, their allies, their lord commander's brother, without any objection or qualm. This final battle of the Corpse Brigade arc will not be fought against the Corpse Brigade, but against our very own Order.
Ramza: "Why did you do it, Argath? What moved your hand?"
Argath: "Your lord brother's orders, Ramza. What else? Would you have had us kneel before them, and offer up the Order's honor in exchange for the life of some common wench?"
Ramza: "She was Delita's sister!"
Argath: "Is it not time you awoke to the fact that we are different from them? They are of lesser birth, and so meant to play lesser roles in life! Such is the nature of fate, Ramza! That commoner and his sister ought never have been here at all! Had they been mongering flowers on some street corner, she would yet live."
Our objective this time is to defeat Argath, and that's what I'm setting out to do, because this is not a battle I can win through conventional attrition. Our opposition is made up of two Black Mages, three Knights, and Argath, who fights us as a Knight with Equip Crossbow. This is a 6 v 5, we don't control Delita, and Delita is lv 3, making him incredibly vulnerable. Plus, our starting positions are dogshit. Squad 1 starts out in the open at lower elevation staring at a bunch of Black Mages, while Squad 2 is stuck there:
Let's get this over with.
We open with a strong showing for Shockwave; you can see just how utterly ridiculous its range is, basically being able to hit across the entire map in the cardinal directions. This allows Ramza to move up his full range and immediately blast Argath. This triggers dialogue, which will save for later.
In case you're wondering, yes. Tietra's body will remain up on that bridge the entire battle, a silent testament to the tragedy unfolding.
The good news is that Argath has to contend with the same weird range factors as an Archer, and that this gets him within range of Delita to punish. So far, things are going well! We're hitting our high value target from multiple directions at once, the enemy is coming into our range of his own free will, this is fine.
Then the Black Mages get their move.
There's not much to say there. They both cast Fira for enormous amounts of damage, take out Ramza instantly and nearly kill my Thief, and Delita is so severely injured he starts running away on his next turn, becoming useless to me. The damage they have is insane compared to what Osric is capable of; is it just the jump from Fire to Fira? They actually hit Argath in the process, but he has enough HP to tank it.
Next is just scrambling to make up for the blow. Raise Ramza with a Phoenix Down, have him use a Hi-Potion on himself; meanwhile Osric and Gillian are still stuck in a back alley trying to get past a single knight, completely useless to the fight. I've wasted an entire turn and the BLMs go again, killing Ramza again.
Osric is getting stabbed, which is less than ideal.
I barely manage to bring Gillian over to the main battle in time to start raising Ramza again, and she just gets hit by more black magic, taking her and Delita both out in one fell swoop.
Tietra actually has a status window, but it is entirely blank.
That's it. Osric is the last of my characters still standing, and his only commands are Summon and Black Magic. He is fucking toast. I try a hail mary of having him summon Ramuh in the middle of the main enemy formation, hoping against hope that this takes out Argath, but it's futile.
Argath shoots him before he can cast.
...
Let's take a break for image count and reconvene.
Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 5.B: End of Chapter 1
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So that was an unmitigated disaster.
It's a little frustrating. Actually very frustrating. This was a great story moment, but it was immediately followed by an extremely difficult battle that I failed, so now I have to sit through the entire sequence leading up to it again, and to every mid-battle speech, because it's not like the game autosaves between the cutscene and the fight. No, every time you wipe to an encounter you have to do the cutscene again.
Yes, this means I sat through Wiegraf and Gargaroth's conversation and Wiegraf's defiant speech to Ramza eight separate times.
Thank God for the fast forward function.
The battle is tough enough that I do think I'm going to need to focus on assassinating Argath; I don't have the range and mobility to take out the Black Mages before they start wrecking my team. Ramza has to be included in Squad 1, which means he only get one support member, and the other two are off into the cursed alleyway being worthless for Turn 1 and even Turn 2 if I'm unlucky. However, if I can draw Argath to me and drag the fight towards the middle of the arena, where both squads can converge, I should be out of the BLMs' initial range and able to focus my strength on the enemy.
…
I do spend some time in the menu fiddling with my Abilities but I just don't really have enough JP to afford any big shifts or experiments. I could teach Osric a second-tier black magic spell, but I'm trying to save up the JP so I can have him unlock Arcane Strength, which improves magical damage across the board. I do consider having everyone drop JP Boost for this fight and replace it with a more directly useful Support Ability, but like… I don't have any of those. JP is too scarce for me to easily afford anything that isn't one new Ability per major story development, effectively; Ramza just got Shockwave, Osric just got Ramuh, Gillian just became a White Mage and is saving up for Raise, Hadrian and Hester are at this point the main characters sitting on a pile of unspent JP (for Thief and Knight respectively) because I can't decide what would be most useful and can only afford one or two purchases.
So no, the toolkit I have now will have to do.
Let's try again.
This time, I have Gillian back up Ramza and Osric team up with Hadrian, the goal being that Hadrian moves fast and so should be able to join up with Squad 1 quickly. I have both Ramza and Hadrian move aggressively towards the enemy to draw their attention and try taking out Argath's support units (does that contradict what I just said about treating this as an assassination mission? Yes, it's just that I immediately changed my mind upon hitting the 'COMMENCE!' screen). As you can see here, the path to the second BLM is blocked by the enemy KNT, so Hadrian can't get to her and geek the mage the way I'd hoped, but the Knight is left trying frontal attacks which fail against Hadrian's high defense, and that means neither the KNT nor the BLM can advance towards Osric, who is free to make his slow way towards Squad 1.
That still leaves them able to hit Hadrian and Gillian for severe fire damage (I THOUGHT THE SNOW WAS SUPPOSED TO REDUCE FIRE DAMAGE, WHAT GIVES), but this time my characters are much more spaced out so they're not caught in the AoE and they only deal single-target damage.
And then… Do you see it in that picture above?
Argath decided to come down into the central alley to get a closer shot at Delita. Which puts him square in the middle of all my converging troops. Which means, I change plans a second time and revert to 'kill Argath immediately.'
Hadrian abandons the Knight he was dueling to go stab Argath in the back, and Osric follows up with a little Ramuh summon, hitting Argath for 57 damage and none of the other characters encircling him because, again, summons don't have friendly fire.
Ramza follows up, flanking Argath on the side, and hitting him with monk punches for another third of his HP. This drives him into critical HP - and his movement options are so restricted that all he can do is run and cower in a corner.
My other characters are taking a beating, but that doesn't matter. As long as can take out Argath - nothing else matters.
Which does lend a particular edge to his mid-combat speech, as contempt gives way to desperation and spite even as, in gameplay, Argath gets increasingly battered and cornered.
Argath: "What of you, Ramza? Why do you now raise arms against us? To turn your blade on us is treason! You would turn your cloak and name yourself a traitor to the Order of the Northern Sky?"
Ramza: "But - the Order would never forgive what you've done!"
Argath: "Does your naivety know no end? How ironic is fate, that one such as you would be born a Beoulve!"
Delita: "Make your peace with the gods, Argath! You die by my hand!"
Footage from previous battle.
Ramza: "My birth was not of my choosing!"
Argath: "Spare me the bleating, you are no sheep! You are a Beoulve, self-chosen or not! Yours is a line of champions, of lords among men! To do great deeds is your destiny, and your duty as well. Much is there that cannot be done, save by your hand. It falls to you to see it so - to act where we cannot."
Ramza: "I will not be made a puppet!"
Argath: "You? A puppet? Don't be absurd! The puppets stand before you, Ramza! Long have we danced for House Beoulve, that it might reign on history's stage. A dance that serves our ends, to be sure. The Beoulve name is our shield, behind whose aegis we've long thrived. It is the way of things! People are used, and use others in turn! How do you think you came to be where you are? You are loath to be used, yet you fain use others. Even your so-called friend Delita!"
Ramza: "What do you mean?"
Argath: "You play the white knight, but I'd feed panthers on the plain save you'd seen some use in me!"
Ramza: "Don't be absurd! I would never turn my back on a man beset!"
Argath: "Then you'd best learn to start! Many a trap-sprung lion would sooner have his savior for a meal than for a friend."
[He turns to Delita.]
Argath: "Does it grieve you, Delita, to see the depths of your own weakness laid bare? No mere commoner can leave his mark on history! You've not the power! Be glad you know enough to lament it. 'Tis all you can do, and more than you deserve!""
Delita: "Is your forked tongue done flitting? What I'd hear from your lips are not words!"
Argath: "Laughter, then? Be not so hasty, Delita! You'll hear that soon enough, when you are on your way to your dear sister's side!"
Delita: "I'll not be told what I will do, or when! Not by you, nor by any other!"
God, what a great villain.
Argath has fully understood his assignment as a pro wrestling heel or a Shakespearian villain, depending on your perspective, the kind who knows exactly how to step up on the stage and make you hate him while still being, on some level, kind of compelling. There's just enough of a legitimate grievance and fear - his anger at Ramza's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the world as it exists and the class dynamics that give him power and responsibility regardless of how he feels about them - behind his truly despicable actions and insults, his constant mocking of Delita, his absolute disdain towards Tietra (he murdered a child and he doesn't give a shit), and he just has enough of a passionate vibe for grand soliloquies about history's course and our roles in it that he's actually enjoyable to watch.
Like - the thing about Argath is that so far he has made absolutely no statement that he wants to usurp Ramza, to take his place or rise to the same heights of power. He is content in his role as a henchmen and a member of the lesser nobility, and his anger towards Ramza is aimed entirely at Ramza's refusal to assume his rightful position as the guy ordering Argath to do war crimes. Argath doesn't want to become the guy in charge, he wants Ramza to be the guy in charge, kill his friend Delita, stop caring about commoners, and allow Argath the power and safety of a guy one step lower on the class ladder, who enjoys the protection of the Beoulves and doesn't have to ask himself what to do in life because they're pointing him to what they need be done, and concerning themselves with the grand politics of the kingdom.
What an asshole. He's fantastic. I can't wait to stab him in the face.
The enemy closes in on our ranks. The BLMs fire spells that take out Osric, severely injure Gillian, and finally KO Delita. But we have Argath cornered, and we can deal more damage to a single character than they can spread over our entire party.
This time again, it's Hadrian, the Thief, who deals the killing blow. Argath collapses to the ground, then finds the strength to rise to his knees again, groaning that he will not die at the hands of 'milksop rabble'... Then falls again.
A commoner's blade cuts just as true as a noble's. This is a lesson Argath should have learned well from the nameless squire who stabbed his grandfather in the back and started his family's downfall.
Contempt is no armor against swords.
For this victory, we earn a whopping 7,600 Bonus Coin and no other rewards; I still don't really understand how Bonus Coin works, but this should safely see our next round of gear upgrades for most of the party.
A cutscene follows.
Delita reaches the bridge above, and retrieves his sister's body. Ramza says he's sorry, but before they can exchange any further words, the fortress begins to shake.
It looks like our battle was just enough time for Gargoroth to set fire to the powder stores and for the fuse to reach its end. Ramza, panicked, tells Delita they have to leave, but it's too late.
Seriously dude what the fuck is wrong with your hands.
Smoke and fire consume the fortress. The blasts knocks Ramza out briefly; he opens his eyes again in time to see Delita, his back turned, still holding his sister, standing amidst the flames. He does not turn to look at Ramza, even as Ramza calls out his name.
The flames surge, and there's a great roar like collapsing walls, and all of it swallows Delita.
Fade to white.
…
No wonder Ramza thought Delita had died. He watched him be swallowed up in a powder keg blast that blew up an entire fortress. Gargoroth's parting gift.
Delita…
Man.
It's not clear yet who he's working for in the present; Agrias guessed Duke Goldanna, and that's entirely possible - Delita could simply have thrown in with Duke Larg's rival for the regency out of anger and a desire for revenge. But I do wonder if there isn't more there. Delita's arc across Chapter 1 has been one of awakening to the way the nobility use and discard commoners, how he was made to fight and kill people like him, of his same social class, who had entirely legitimate grievances.
"Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I." Clearly, Delita is working for someone who sees Princess Ovelia as an obstacle, likely due to her inconvenient position in the royal family tree. But faith? We don't yet have a clear picture of what role religion is playing into the War of the Lions.
But one thing seems apparent, and it's that he no longer has any word or thought to spare for Ramza. He didn't, kneeling over his sister's body, killed on order of Ramza's own brother. He didn't, standing astride his chocobo and watching Ramza for one moment before running away with the captive princess.
There's no doubt that won't last. Soon, Ramza and Delita must face each other again, and we'll know more of Delita's true feelings. In the meantime…
And here we see Ramza walk away from the ruins, in the snow of the mountains, towards a new and uncertain future. One thing is for certain; there's no going back to the way things were.
Ramza: "I had lived my life the only way that I had known. But when the pillars of that life came crashing down, I did not stand and watch them fall. I turned, and walked away."
And here, we are given the option to save, just as if we'd hit the end of a Disc on VII or VIII. That's effectively what this is - the end of Chapter I: The Meager.
To my surprise, we do not follow it up with how Ramza met with Gaffgarion or joined his band of sellswords. No, instead, we flash back to where we left off at the start of the game: Orbonne Monastery, moments after Delita's escape.
Which means that Ramza's sweet 'I have gone over to the dark side' spiked armor is here to stay, very good.
Gaffgarion: "What's this, Ramza? Do you know him?"
Ramza: "..."
[Agrias steps out of the monastery.]
Agrias: "He carries the princess with him. They'll not be able to travel far."
Gaffgarion: "You mean to give chase?"
Agrias: "What else? I will not return to the Crown in shame!"
Gaffgarion: "Well, you'll have no help from us! Our agreement said naught of this."
Agrias: "I would not accept your help if you offered it! A true knight is all too eager to set right what he has let go amiss. The Lionsguard will serve the king's justice. Lavian, Alicia. We leave at once!"
[At this point, the old priest comes out.]
Agrias: "Elder Simon! You are unharmed?"
Elder Simon: "The princess…! What of the princess?"
Agrias: "She is taken. I am sorry. But you may put your fears to rest. We go to rescue her!"
Elder Simon: "No. No, milady, you mustn't! You would only throw your own life away."
Agrias: "Your worry will find no purchase with me. A knight is oathbound to render aid!"
Ramza: [He steps forward to address Agrias.] "I want to go with you! I'll be no trouble to you, I swear it!"
Gaffgarion: "Nonsense, Ramza! This is no concern of ours!"
Ramza: "I must go! I must know if it's truly him!"
Gaffgarion: "The boy, eh?
[Ramza lowers his head and closes his eyes, as if apologizing. Gaffgarion turns around and takes a few steps away.]
Gaffgarion: "Well, there it is. Gods know where this path leads us."
[The camera pans up, onto the title card.]
CHAPTER 2: The Manipulative & The Subservient
Kind of a mouthful, if you ask me. "The Meager" flowed better.
And with this, we open on a new chapter of the game. Several members join our party: Ladd, Lavian and Alicia, who were all called out by name in this cutscene or the one at the start of the game, join us as one lv 8 Squire and two lv 8 Knights - actually a little stronger than Hester, our Knight (who recently swapped over to Monk) who is still lv 7. Not only that, but our new party roster includes…
Gaffgarion and Agrias our now in our party roster. Like Argath and Delita before them, they're Guest members we will not control in combat; unlike Argath and Delita before them, they are powerful special knights with unique abilities and vastly superior equipment to our own. Ramza and Agrias are both lv 10, but she has much more HP than him, can hit harder, and has better skills.
These are two powerhouses that we are going to need, because:
Look at this new map.
The Orbonne Monastery is one node away from the Merchant City of Dorter. Its only path leads directly to Dorter. There is nothing we can do here other than prep our party roster, then move to Dorter. We cannot do anything else, cannot backtrack, cannot grind random encounters, etc.
In Dorter, another mandatory battle awaits us. That battle will involve enemies of higher level than us. Without Agrias and Gaffgarion's special skills, it would be entirely possible to have just softlocked ourselves by showing up with a group not strong enough to take on the next encounter and having absolutely no recourse than to reload whatever our most recent save from before the Ziekden Fortress battle was. That would feel really bad!
Thankfully, we have these two powerhouses with us, and we'll see them in action next time, when we deal with the Dorter 2 battle.
…
I really like the character dynamic here, where Gaffgarion is a cantankerous old bastard who doesn't want to do anything not in his contract, Agrias is a pride and prickly knight who keeps going 'NOT LIKE I NEEDED YOU ANYWAY,' and yet Ramza just mentioning that this guy they saw for thirty seconds is his childhood friend who's supposed to be dead and he needs to find out what happened is enough for Gaffy to immediately do a 180° and go "alright then let's hunt down this guy.' It's notable how Agrias's ethos around how a knight is 'oathbound,' must aid those in need, must selflessly pursue justice at their own risk, is only introduced to us after we've seen just how much 'oaths' and 'justice' and 'aid' matter to the great and devout knights of House Beoulve - she's almost presented to us as an archaism, an oddity for taking her role so seriously.
It's a little… jarring, how we timeskip ahead by one full year and are given no explanation of who the Princess is (she was not mentioned in prior Rumor or Chronicle entries), how she's connected to the royal family, how we came to work with her, what she was doing at Orbonne Monastery and what her plans are, how Ramza came to work with Gaffgarion…
Thankfully, we have the Chronicle tab, and its Dramatis Personae to fill us in. We'll also shortly have the Rumors tab at the Tavern, but for that we'll need to first fight our way back to Dorter.
Ramza is no longer Ramza Beoulve (he also now 18). He now goes by Ramza Lugria, his mother's family name. Only Gaffgarion knows his origin… As, presumably, do all the mooks we carried over from Chapter 1? I mean, I get the feeling that within the narrative they're supposed to have all died in the Ziekden Fire, as Ramza wandered off into the snow alone, but the game understandably isn't taking all the blorbos I have spent the last eight game hours laboring over away from us. Which is a good thing, because I would have instantly quit.
Many of the other entries have updated, and new ones have opened. Princess Ovelia was the adoptive daughter of King Ondoria III, but is actually the trueborn daughter to… Who the fuck is Denamda IV?
*furious browsing through past logs*
Okay, Denamda IV was the previous King of Ivalice, noted for his prowess in battle and managing to turn Ivalician defeats into a stalemate. He was struck by malady and succeeded by Ondoria III. Ovelia is Denamda IV's daughter, and Ondoria III's half-sister, whom he adopted as his daughter - presumably in a measure to ensure a chain of succession with reinforced legitimacy in case he died without an heir; once he had a 'trueborn' son, Ovelia was no longer necessary and was sidelined and entrusted to Duke Larg, which ended up making things worse, as Ondoria's son is too young to assume power, precipitation the current succession crisis.
It's unlikely that Queen Louveria has much love for Ovelia, who lost two children shortly after birth, watched Ondoria adopt a female successor unrelated to her, and only barely managed to issue a son before Ondoria died and left her with a succession crisis to manage. Ovelia is an active threat to Prince Orinus's claim to the throne and therefore to Louveria being the Queen Mother whose issue remain kings of Ivalice.
Notably, Queen Louveria's updated entry is much more sinister than previous ones:
Louveria Atkascha (Age 28): Wife of King Ondoria III of Ivalice and trueborn sister to Duke Larg. Louveria became queen at twenty years of age and gave birth to three sons. The first two children died shortly after birth, leaving the infant Prince Orinus as the only heir to the throne. After the king's death, the queen quickly disposed of any who stood in her way - even members of the royal family.
So yeah, it's unlikely the Queen will feature as a particularly sympathetic figure - but the game kept its cards close to its chest on this in Chapter 1, where because the Beoulve serve Duke Larg and Larg is the Queen's brother and staunch ally, it seemed like we'd be falling in with the Queen when the chips went down. Now that we know the Beoulve are just as bad as any other noble house, the game is free to reveal that the Queen herself is a ruthless powermonger… Which doesn't necessarily make her worse than anyone else involved in the conflict.
The picture, as ever, remains blurry.
And for the last roundup of major characters, here are Gaffgarion and Agrias's entries:
Gaffgarion features as another 'got kicked out of his Order because he just couldn't stop doing war crimes' figure like some of the Corpse Brigade members, which I guess fits with his title of Fell Knight. Dude's a good friend to have and a terrible enemy to face. It's also our confirmation that all four orders follow a cardinal naming scheme, with this first reference to the Order of the Eastern Sky.
Alright. We only covered one story battle this time but it was, uh, a lot.
…
This is basically Final Fantasy Tactics's equivalent to the Midgar Plate Drop: The sudden dramatic, tragic, and traumatic event that shatters our protagonists' previous lives, forces them out into the world as outcasts, and just hits you like a punch in the gut. The aesthetic sensibilities are very different - Argath's Shakespearian soliloquies are a far cry from President Shinra's personality, Ramza actually goes off into the wilderness for a year instead of seeking revenge - but the way it recontextualizes everything, irreparably breaks the status quo, and affects our characters emotionally? Yeah, that's about it. Whatever trajectory Ramza, Argath, and Delita might have once had together, it ended forever in the snows of Ziekden Fortress, washed away in Tietra's blood. I wish she'd had more characterization, more screen time, to make her less of a disposable female character getting killed for drama, but we knew Delita enough that it still hurt.
But the greatest hurt, ironically, isn't to Delita's feelings; in a way that strangely validates Argath's worldview, it's to Ramza, who learned that his family was never what he thought them to be, that he was deceived, that their ideals were lies, that the class divide he tried so hard to pretend didn't matter to him would be made to matter regardless of his wishes.
Man.
What a good fucking game.
Anyway, we have updated classes: Ramza can now become a Geomancer, Hadrian can become a Dragoon, Gillian can become a Mystic. I've taken two out of these three classes for a spin with the next main story mission, which I've already beaten, but we'll wait until next time to cover them in detail (or at least I will, feel free to talk about them since I've already tested them a little). For now, I'm exhausted from writing this, but also quite satisfied with this sequence of the game.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: On the Princess's trail.
It's a little frustrating. Actually very frustrating. This was a great story moment, but it was immediately followed by an extremely difficult battle that I failed, so now I have to sit through the entire sequence leading up to it again, and to every mid-battle speech, because it's not like the game autosaves between the cutscene and the fight. No, every time you wipe to an encounter you have to do the cutscene again.
Yes, this means I sat through Wiegraf and Gargaroth's conversation and Wiegraf's defiant speech to Ramza eight separate times.
Thank God for the fast forward function.
The battle is tough enough that I do think I'm going to need to focus on assassinating Argath; I don't have the range and mobility to take out the Black Mages before they start wrecking my team. Ramza has to be included in Squad 1, which means he only get one support member, and the other two are off into the cursed alleyway being worthless for Turn 1 and even Turn 2 if I'm unlucky. However, if I can draw Argath to me and drag the fight towards the middle of the arena, where both squads can converge, I should be out of the BLMs' initial range and able to focus my strength on the enemy.
…
I do spend some time in the menu fiddling with my Abilities but I just don't really have enough JP to afford any big shifts or experiments. I could teach Osric a second-tier black magic spell, but I'm trying to save up the JP so I can have him unlock Arcane Strength, which improves magical damage across the board. I do consider having everyone drop JP Boost for this fight and replace it with a more directly useful Support Ability, but like… I don't have any of those. JP is too scarce for me to easily afford anything that isn't one new Ability per major story development, effectively; Ramza just got Shockwave, Osric just got Ramuh, Gillian just became a White Mage and is saving up for Raise, Hadrian and Hester are at this point the main characters sitting on a pile of unspent JP (for Thief and Knight respectively) because I can't decide what would be most useful and can only afford one or two purchases.
So no, the toolkit I have now will have to do.
Let's try again.
This time, I have Gillian back up Ramza and Osric team up with Hadrian, the goal being that Hadrian moves fast and so should be able to join up with Squad 1 quickly. I have both Ramza and Hadrian move aggressively towards the enemy to draw their attention and try taking out Argath's support units (does that contradict what I just said about treating this as an assassination mission? Yes, it's just that I immediately changed my mind upon hitting the 'COMMENCE!' screen). As you can see here, the path to the second BLM is blocked by the enemy KNT, so Hadrian can't get to her and geek the mage the way I'd hoped, but the Knight is left trying frontal attacks which fail against Hadrian's high defense, and that means neither the KNT nor the BLM can advance towards Osric, who is free to make his slow way towards Squad 1.
That still leaves them able to hit Hadrian and Gillian for severe fire damage (I THOUGHT THE SNOW WAS SUPPOSED TO REDUCE FIRE DAMAGE, WHAT GIVES), but this time my characters are much more spaced out so they're not caught in the AoE and they only deal single-target damage.
And then… Do you see it in that picture above?
Argath decided to come down into the central alley to get a closer shot at Delita. Which puts him square in the middle of all my converging troops. Which means, I change plans a second time and revert to 'kill Argath immediately.'
Hadrian abandons the Knight he was dueling to go stab Argath in the back, and Osric follows up with a little Ramuh summon, hitting Argath for 57 damage and none of the other characters encircling him because, again, summons don't have friendly fire.
Ramza follows up, flanking Argath on the side, and hitting him with monk punches for another third of his HP. This drives him into critical HP - and his movement options are so restricted that all he can do is run and cower in a corner.
My other characters are taking a beating, but that doesn't matter. As long as can take out Argath - nothing else matters.
Which does lend a particular edge to his mid-combat speech, as contempt gives way to desperation and spite even as, in gameplay, Argath gets increasingly battered and cornered.
Argath: "What of you, Ramza? Why do you now raise arms against us? To turn your blade on us is treason! You would turn your cloak and name yourself a traitor to the Order of the Northern Sky?"
Ramza: "But - the Order would never forgive what you've done!"
Argath: "Does your naivety know no end? How ironic is fate, that one such as you would be born a Beoulve!"
Delita: "Make your peace with the gods, Argath! You die by my hand!"
Footage from previous battle.
Ramza: "My birth was not of my choosing!"
Argath: "Spare me the bleating, you are no sheep! You are a Beoulve, self-chosen or not! Yours is a line of champions, of lords among men! To do great deeds is your destiny, and your duty as well. Much is there that cannot be done, save by your hand. It falls to you to see it so - to act where we cannot."
Ramza: "I will not be made a puppet!"
Argath: "You? A puppet? Don't be absurd! The puppets stand before you, Ramza! Long have we danced for House Beoulve, that it might reign on history's stage. A dance that serves our ends, to be sure. The Beoulve name is our shield, behind whose aegis we've long thrived. It is the way of things! People are used, and use others in turn! How do you think you came to be where you are? You are loath to be used, yet you fain use others. Even your so-called friend Delita!"
Ramza: "What do you mean?"
Argath: "You play the white knight, but I'd feed panthers on the plain save you'd seen some use in me!"
Ramza: "Don't be absurd! I would never turn my back on a man beset!"
Argath: "Then you'd best learn to start! Many a trap-sprung lion would sooner have his savior for a meal than for a friend."
[He turns to Delita.]
Argath: "Does it grieve you, Delita, to see the depths of your own weakness laid bare? No mere commoner can leave his mark on history! You've not the power! Be glad you know enough to lament it. 'Tis all you can do, and more than you deserve!""
Delita: "Is your forked tongue done flitting? What I'd hear from your lips are not words!"
Argath: "Laughter, then? Be not so hasty, Delita! You'll hear that soon enough, when you are on your way to your dear sister's side!"
Delita: "I'll not be told what I will do, or when! Not by you, nor by any other!"
God, what a great villain.
Argath has fully understood his assignment as a pro wrestling heel or a Shakespearian villain, depending on your perspective, the kind who knows exactly how to step up on the stage and make you hate him while still being, on some level, kind of compelling. There's just enough of a legitimate grievance and fear - his anger at Ramza's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the world as it exists and the class dynamics that give him power and responsibility regardless of how he feels about them - behind his truly despicable actions and insults, his constant mocking of Delita, his absolute disdain towards Tietra (he murdered a child and he doesn't give a shit), and he just has enough of a passionate vibe for grand soliloquies about history's course and our roles in it that he's actually enjoyable to watch.
Like - the thing about Argath is that so far he has made absolutely no statement that he wants to usurp Ramza, to take his place or rise to the same heights of power. He is content in his role as a henchmen and a member of the lesser nobility, and his anger towards Ramza is aimed entirely at Ramza's refusal to assume his rightful position as the guy ordering Argath to do war crimes. Argath doesn't want to become the guy in charge, he wants Ramza to be the guy in charge, kill his friend Delita, stop caring about commoners, and allow Argath the power and safety of a guy one step lower on the class ladder, who enjoys the protection of the Beoulves and doesn't have to ask himself what to do in life because they're pointing him to what they need be done, and concerning themselves with the grand politics of the kingdom.
What an asshole. He's fantastic. I can't wait to stab him in the face.
The enemy closes in on our ranks. The BLMs fire spells that take out Osric, severely injure Gillian, and finally KO Delita. But we have Argath cornered, and we can deal more damage to a single character than they can spread over our entire party.
This time again, it's Hadrian, the Thief, who deals the killing blow. Argath collapses to the ground, then finds the strength to rise to his knees again, groaning that he will not die at the hands of 'milksop rabble'... Then falls again.
A commoner's blade cuts just as true as a noble's. This is a lesson Argath should have learned well from the nameless squire who stabbed his grandfather in the back and started his family's downfall.
Contempt is no armor against swords.
For this victory, we earn a whopping 7,600 Bonus Coin and no other rewards; I still don't really understand how Bonus Coin works, but this should safely see our next round of gear upgrades for most of the party.
A cutscene follows.
Delita reaches the bridge above, and retrieves his sister's body. Ramza says he's sorry, but before they can exchange any further words, the fortress begins to shake.
It looks like our battle was just enough time for Gargoroth to set fire to the powder stores and for the fuse to reach its end. Ramza, panicked, tells Delita they have to leave, but it's too late.
Seriously dude what the fuck is wrong with your hands.
Smoke and fire consume the fortress. The blasts knocks Ramza out briefly; he opens his eyes again in time to see Delita, his back turned, still holding his sister, standing amidst the flames. He does not turn to look at Ramza, even as Ramza calls out his name.
The flames surge, and there's a great roar like collapsing walls, and all of it swallows Delita.
Fade to white.
…
No wonder Ramza thought Delita had died. He watched him be swallowed up in a powder keg blast that blew up an entire fortress. Gargoroth's parting gift.
Delita…
Man.
It's not clear yet who he's working for in the present; Agrias guessed Duke Goldanna, and that's entirely possible - Delita could simply have thrown in with Duke Larg's rival for the regency out of anger and a desire for revenge. But I do wonder if there isn't more there. Delita's arc across Chapter 1 has been one of awakening to the way the nobility use and discard commoners, how he was made to fight and kill people like him, of his same social class, who had entirely legitimate grievances.
"Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I." Clearly, Delita is working for someone who sees Princess Ovelia as an obstacle, likely due to her inconvenient position in the royal family tree. But faith? We don't yet have a clear picture of what role religion is playing into the War of the Lions.
But one thing seems apparent, and it's that he no longer has any word or thought to spare for Ramza. He didn't, kneeling over his sister's body, killed on order of Ramza's own brother. He didn't, standing astride his chocobo and watching Ramza for one moment before running away with the captive princess.
There's no doubt that won't last. Soon, Ramza and Delita must face each other again, and we'll know more of Delita's true feelings. In the meantime…
And here we see Ramza walk away from the ruins, in the snow of the mountains, towards a new and uncertain future. One thing is for certain; there's no going back to the way things were.
Ramza: "I had lived my life the only way that I had known. But when the pillars of that life came crashing down, I did not stand and watch them fall. I turned, and walked away."
And here, we are given the option to save, just as if we'd hit the end of a Disc on VII or VIII. That's effectively what this is - the end of Chapter I: The Meager.
To my surprise, we do not follow it up with how Ramza met with Gaffgarion or joined his band of sellswords. No, instead, we flash back to where we left off at the start of the game: Orbonne Monastery, moments after Delita's escape.
Which means that Ramza's sweet 'I have gone over to the dark side' spiked armor is here to stay, very good.
Gaffgarion: "What's this, Ramza? Do you know him?"
Ramza: "..."
[Agrias steps out of the monastery.]
Agrias: "He carries the princess with him. They'll not be able to travel far."
Gaffgarion: "You mean to give chase?"
Agrias: "What else? I will not return to the Crown in shame!"
Gaffgarion: "Well, you'll have no help from us! Our agreement said naught of this."
Agrias: "I would not accept your help if you offered it! A true knight is all too eager to set right what he has let go amiss. The Lionsguard will serve the king's justice. Lavian, Alicia. We leave at once!"
[At this point, the old priest comes out.]
Agrias: "Elder Simon! You are unharmed?"
Elder Simon: "The princess…! What of the princess?"
Agrias: "She is taken. I am sorry. But you may put your fears to rest. We go to rescue her!"
Elder Simon: "No. No, milady, you mustn't! You would only throw your own life away."
Agrias: "Your worry will find no purchase with me. A knight is oathbound to render aid!"
Ramza: [He steps forward to address Agrias.] "I want to go with you! I'll be no trouble to you, I swear it!"
Gaffgarion: "Nonsense, Ramza! This is no concern of ours!"
Ramza: "I must go! I must know if it's truly him!"
Gaffgarion: "The boy, eh?
[Ramza lowers his head and closes his eyes, as if apologizing. Gaffgarion turns around and takes a few steps away.]
Gaffgarion: "Well, there it is. Gods know where this path leads us."
[The camera pans up, onto the title card.]
CHAPTER 2: The Manipulative & The Subservient
Kind of a mouthful, if you ask me. "The Meager" flowed better.
And with this, we open on a new chapter of the game. Several members join our party: Ladd, Lavian and Alicia, who were all called out by name in this cutscene or the one at the start of the game, join us as one lv 8 Squire and two lv 8 Knights - actually a little stronger than Hester, our Knight (who recently swapped over to Monk) who is still lv 7. Not only that, but our new party roster includes…
Gaffgarion and Agrias our now in our party roster. Like Argath and Delita before them, they're Guest members we will not control in combat; unlike Argath and Delita before them, they are powerful special knights with unique abilities and vastly superior equipment to our own. Ramza and Agrias are both lv 10, but she has much more HP than him, can hit harder, and has better skills.
These are two powerhouses that we are going to need, because:
Look at this new map.
The Orbonne Monastery is one node away from the Merchant City of Dorter. Its only path leads directly to Dorter. There is nothing we can do here other than prep our party roster, then move to Dorter. We cannot do anything else, cannot backtrack, cannot grind random encounters, etc.
In Dorter, another mandatory battle awaits us. That battle will involve enemies of higher level than us. Without Agrias and Gaffgarion's special skills, it would be entirely possible to have just softlocked ourselves by showing up with a group not strong enough to take on the next encounter and having absolutely no recourse than to reload whatever our most recent save from before the Ziekden Fortress battle was. That would feel really bad!
Thankfully, we have these two powerhouses with us, and we'll see them in action next time, when we deal with the Dorter 2 battle.
…
I really like the character dynamic here, where Gaffgarion is a cantankerous old bastard who doesn't want to do anything not in his contract, Agrias is a pride and prickly knight who keeps going 'NOT LIKE I NEEDED YOU ANYWAY,' and yet Ramza just mentioning that this guy they saw for thirty seconds is his childhood friend who's supposed to be dead and he needs to find out what happened is enough for Gaffy to immediately do a 180° and go "alright then let's hunt down this guy.' It's notable how Agrias's ethos around how a knight is 'oathbound,' must aid those in need, must selflessly pursue justice at their own risk, is only introduced to us after we've seen just how much 'oaths' and 'justice' and 'aid' matter to the great and devout knights of House Beoulve - she's almost presented to us as an archaism, an oddity for taking her role so seriously.
It's a little… jarring, how we timeskip ahead by one full year and are given no explanation of who the Princess is (she was not mentioned in prior Rumor or Chronicle entries), how she's connected to the royal family, how we came to work with her, what she was doing at Orbonne Monastery and what her plans are, how Ramza came to work with Gaffgarion…
Thankfully, we have the Chronicle tab, and its Dramatis Personae to fill us in. We'll also shortly have the Rumors tab at the Tavern, but for that we'll need to first fight our way back to Dorter.
Ramza is no longer Ramza Beoulve (he also now 18). He now goes by Ramza Lugria, his mother's family name. Only Gaffgarion knows his origin… As, presumably, do all the mooks we carried over from Chapter 1? I mean, I get the feeling that within the narrative they're supposed to have all died in the Ziekden Fire, as Ramza wandered off into the snow alone, but the game understandably isn't taking all the blorbos I have spent the last eight game hours laboring over away from us. Which is a good thing, because I would have instantly quit.
Many of the other entries have updated, and new ones have opened. Princess Ovelia was the adoptive daughter of King Ondoria III, but is actually the trueborn daughter to… Who the fuck is Denamda IV?
*furious browsing through past logs*
Okay, Denamda IV was the previous King of Ivalice, noted for his prowess in battle and managing to turn Ivalician defeats into a stalemate. He was struck by malady and succeeded by Ondoria III. Ovelia is Denamda IV's daughter, and Ondoria III's half-sister, whom he adopted as his daughter - presumably in a measure to ensure a chain of succession with reinforced legitimacy in case he died without an heir; once he had a 'trueborn' son, Ovelia was no longer necessary and was sidelined and entrusted to Duke Larg, which ended up making things worse, as Ondoria's son is too young to assume power, precipitation the current succession crisis.
It's unlikely that Queen Louveria has much love for Ovelia, who lost two children shortly after birth, watched Ondoria adopt a female successor unrelated to her, and only barely managed to issue a son before Ondoria died and left her with a succession crisis to manage. Ovelia is an active threat to Prince Orinus's claim to the throne and therefore to Louveria being the Queen Mother whose issue remain kings of Ivalice.
Notably, Queen Louveria's updated entry is much more sinister than previous ones:
Louveria Atkascha (Age 28): Wife of King Ondoria III of Ivalice and trueborn sister to Duke Larg. Louveria became queen at twenty years of age and gave birth to three sons. The first two children died shortly after birth, leaving the infant Prince Orinus as the only heir to the throne. After the king's death, the queen quickly disposed of any who stood in her way - even members of the royal family.
So yeah, it's unlikely the Queen will feature as a particularly sympathetic figure - but the game kept its cards close to its chest on this in Chapter 1, where because the Beoulve serve Duke Larg and Larg is the Queen's brother and staunch ally, it seemed like we'd be falling in with the Queen when the chips went down. Now that we know the Beoulve are just as bad as any other noble house, the game is free to reveal that the Queen herself is a ruthless powermonger… Which doesn't necessarily make her worse than anyone else involved in the conflict.
The picture, as ever, remains blurry.
And for the last roundup of major characters, here are Gaffgarion and Agrias's entries:
Gaffgarion features as another 'got kicked out of his Order because he just couldn't stop doing war crimes' figure like some of the Corpse Brigade members, which I guess fits with his title of Fell Knight. Dude's a good friend to have and a terrible enemy to face. It's also our confirmation that all four orders follow a cardinal naming scheme, with this first reference to the Order of the Eastern Sky.
Alright. We only covered one story battle this time but it was, uh, a lot.
…
This is basically Final Fantasy Tactics's equivalent to the Midgar Plate Drop: The sudden dramatic, tragic, and traumatic event that shatters our protagonists' previous lives, forces them out into the world as outcasts, and just hits you like a punch in the gut. The aesthetic sensibilities are very different - Argath's Shakespearian soliloquies are a far cry from President Shinra's personality, Ramza actually goes off into the wilderness for a year instead of seeking revenge - but the way it recontextualizes everything, irreparably breaks the status quo, and affects our characters emotionally? Yeah, that's about it. Whatever trajectory Ramza, Argath, and Delita might have once had together, it ended forever in the snows of Ziekden Fortress, washed away in Tietra's blood. I wish she'd had more characterization, more screen time, to make her less of a disposable female character getting killed for drama, but we knew Delita enough that it still hurt.
But the greatest hurt, ironically, isn't to Delita's feelings; in a way that strangely validates Argath's worldview, it's to Ramza, who learned that his family was never what he thought them to be, that he was deceived, that their ideals were lies, that the class divide he tried so hard to pretend didn't matter to him would be made to matter regardless of his wishes.
Man.
What a good fucking game.
Anyway, we have updated classes: Ramza can now become a Geomancer, Hadrian can become a Dragoon, Gillian can become a Mystic. I've taken two out of these three classes for a spin with the next main story mission, which I've already beaten, but we'll wait until next time to cover them in detail (or at least I will, feel free to talk about them since I've already tested them a little). For now, I'm exhausted from writing this, but also quite satisfied with this sequence of the game.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: On the Princess's trail.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Yeah, that thing you noticed with being potentially softlocked?
They throw you a bone here in that Gaffgarion and Agrias are absolute beasts for this first incident, but this isn't the first time you'll find your mobility restricted without much in the way of telegraphing and it prevents you from preparing overly much without going through the Story. This is why everyone keeps saying "KEEP MULTIPLE SAVE FILES"
You don't want to be stuck grinding levels and JP on a shitty-ass map that's half Deep River for days, I'll tell you that right now (Yes, that is a thing that can happen, you'll probably know it when you see it), and that's one of the gentler Incidents because there's still a source of Random Encounters you can grind on, even if the terrain is cancer.
They throw you a bone here in that Gaffgarion and Agrias are absolute beasts for this first incident, but this isn't the first time you'll find your mobility restricted without much in the way of telegraphing and it prevents you from preparing overly much without going through the Story. This is why everyone keeps saying "KEEP MULTIPLE SAVE FILES"
You don't want to be stuck grinding levels and JP on a shitty-ass map that's half Deep River for days, I'll tell you that right now (Yes, that is a thing that can happen, you'll probably know it when you see it), and that's one of the gentler Incidents because there's still a source of Random Encounters you can grind on, even if the terrain is cancer.
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FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Rake #22: Undead don't die when killed.
Status: I'm sure Omi has a bone to pick with this one in particular.
Rake #23: Getting fucked over by blind unit placement.
Status: Whoever thought this was a good idea should be fired out of a cannon.
Two rakes, h/t @dreameater for catching this. I was skimming the grind stuff and missed it.
No matter how many times I play this game, this line always hits hard. 10/10, no notes.
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One cannot avoid the irony that, once again, this is almost what Delita's position already was at the time, sans the blood of nobility.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Tommy, why does this guy keep calling me "Osric?" It's starting to weird me out."
"I don't know, I guess he's got a thing about some friends he lost. I've seen war veterans with weirder habits."
"Hey, I'll be all the Gillian he needs as long as the coin keeps coming."
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If this was a TV show, Argath's the sort of character that would cause his actor to either get harassed or pigeonholed as a villain in future roles. Holy shit.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
In this episode, Ramza learns an important lesson:
Everyone knows this Jojo meme so posting it is déclassé so you're only getting this text.
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Nonesense he tripped the bonezone rake.
Also you gotta love how ride or die Ramza's goon squad are.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Ah. I was skimming the grind and missed that.
Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Is Argath trying to kill that lowborn slattern corrupting a young man of noble worth I can be twice, THRICE the henchman for you he is Ramza we could be perfect together just step aside and let me SLAUGHTER THAT GUTTER TRASH KEEPING US APART a toxic yayoi? 🤔
It's a toxic something.
"Behold, Ramza! I can kill twice as many peasant revolutionaries with half as many qualms! I am the superior hatchetman (which should not be in doubt because I am not lowborn scum)."
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Rake #22: Undead don't die when killed.
Status: I'm sure Omi has a bone to pick with this one in particular.
The joke opportunities were too good. Sorry not sorry
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Seriously dude what the fuck is wrong with your hands.
He just lost his "very good childhood friend" who was like a sibling to him but is very pointedly Not Related To Him who he's willing to drop everything to go chasing after. I couldn't possibly imagine why he's got gigantic hands.
I ship it now.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Not true. Remember their little conspiracy where they asked the Corpse Brigade to kidnap a Marquis? Probably they want to clean up loose ends there.
EDIT: Okay, they were working with Gustav, but he probably told at least some of the others in the group about the plan and they don't know which ones.
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- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
And Omi ends his probationary status in the Argath Haters' Club (membership: anyone who's played past Chapter 1 of FFT) and is now fully initiated into our sacred mysteries. Welcome, brother.
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Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Wow, I didn't see that coming. The fight with Argath, sure, but not that Ramza's knight order killed a hostage without even blinking, despite said hostage being a family friend. The disparity between nobility and commoners is very sharp, eesh.
Poor Ramza and Delita. I can definitely see how this fractures their friendship into pieces, mm.
Poor Ramza and Delita. I can definitely see how this fractures their friendship into pieces, mm.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That was Gustav! Different guy! He's dead now!
Ah yes, we were just discussing this potential interaction in the Spoiler thread, and here it goes and pops up immediately after. Classic.
So, Summoners VS Black Mages! On one hand, Summons hitting a wider area and not hitting allies is absolutely a great thing, and iirc even the basic elemental trio of Shiva/Ramuh/Ifrit hits about as hard as -ga tier spells! Very nice, can't deny. Summoners also have really good Magic and MP growth.
On the other hand, Summoners are sloooooow, especially in the PSP version. Summons take a while to come out, and Summoners themselves have the base speed and durability of wet tissue paper, so they can be even more of a glass cannon class then Black Mages, and even the most basic summons take time to cast. While they hit as hard as -ga tier spells, they also take just as long while a black mage that's buffed up with the right abilities or equipment can just go "Fire/Fira" at a quicker pace to blast a group of enemies. Not a bad tradeoff or anything, but one to keep in mind when blasting.
Ah, and there it is. The Moment from Chapter 1, the climax, the betrayal, what sets everything in the future into motion. The death of a "nobody" commoner girl.
Never considered it that way, honestly, I figured Zalbaag and Dycedarg knew Ramza well enough to realize this would be effectively cutting ties with him... but yeah, I could also see that they genuinely might have thought this would just be a growing up/teaching moment for him of "Ramza you shouldn't worry about those silly commoners".
Yeah, FFT could really use showing you the cutscenes and then letting you place your characters directly on the game map, instead of shoving them in a void and hoping the end result is good.Also Argath was absolutely aiming for Tietra with that first shot lol no way in hell he passed up the chance to kill Delita's sister in front of him like an asshole.
Our objective this time is to defeat Argath, and that's what I'm setting out to do, because this is not a battle I can win through conventional attrition. Our opposition is made up of two Black Mages, three Knights, and Argath, who fights us as a Knight with Equip Crossbow. This is a 6 v 5, we don't control Delita, and Delita is lv 3, making him incredibly vulnerable. Plus, our starting positions are dogshit. Squad 1 starts out in the open at lower elevation staring at a bunch of Black Mages, while Squad 2 is stuck there:
Completely cut off from the main party, stuck behind a wall, at least two turns away from even coming within range of the enemy. Part of this is because I placed them wrong - it would have been possible to place them in the one-tile-wide alley to the side - but I couldn't know that because the game tells you to position your units without showing you the map which is one of the most infuriating things about its encounter design.
Also god I can't wait for an end to guest characters, being constantly forced to not actually utilize your entire squad and have a potentially underleveled and underpowered CPU ally running around being useless instead is a real pain. That's not even getting into things like "Argath just used my entire potion stock healing my injured allies who were miles from the front lines and wouldn't need the healing".
I'd probably go for Rend/Steal Weapon if you're planning on using their main skillsets at all, myself. It's hard to beat the utility of completely crippling an enemy's offensive capabilities in a single move when they work. Otherwise, there's always Steal Heart, or just investing in support abilities like Equip Shield for other, non-shield using classes with the Knight, and Move+2 (maybe Jump+2 but Move strikes me as more generally useful) on the thief.
Argath really do be a great villain, especially considering he originally joined you as some guy you saved from getting murdered and teamed up with to save his boss. In most any other story that tends to be some unifying, bros forever moment where Argath becomes your ride or die friend...
Well, I guess one of those options were true, he's your soon to be dead "friend" once Delita finishes removing his face through copious amounts of punching.
Another thing I hadn't really considered, since in a way Argath is right now showing his loyalty to the Northern Sky Order and potentially cementing himself a place somewhere under Zalbaag... but sure, he also might be totally willing to drop the entire thing if Ramza shrugged his shoulders, went "t'was just some common girl" and put down Delita like the rabid dog he clearly is, happily accepting his place at Ramza's side as his new and way superior because he's noble right hand man.
And yes, you and everyone else who has ever played FFT was very happy to kill this asshole.
Seriously dude what the fuck is wrong with your hands.
Not shown just off screen: the rest of Ramza's trainee knight class looking at each other, the burning outpost, and then Ramza, before all shrugging their shoulders and going "yeah that nobility thing was overrated anyways" and following him off into the snow to play mercenary for the next year.
Yup, Purple Ramza is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and probably his most recognizable design overall.
Also, should probably note just in case: it's been brought up before that Ramza's version of the Squire class is slightly different then the default one, but the point where that really becomes noticeable is here in Chapter 2, where he gains several more abilities he can learn, and also gains access to more equipment types then the default Squire (according to the wiki, he can now wield Shields, Helmets, and Armor), which overall makes it somewhat worth swapping him back to Squire at some point to pick up some more skills.
Probably way better armor doing the carrying weight for all that HP, to be fair, iirc Monks get basically cloth and hats, while I've no doubt Gaffgarion and Agrias are wearing heavy plate and steel helms or something.
Oh hey, Agrias is slightly older than I realized. For some reason I always mentally slotted her as around Ramza's age, barely 18 or 19, but 22 is pretty reasonable compared to the usual "teenage prodigy" or whatever you'd get with some honor-bound knight like her.
That it is, that it is.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Argath and Ramza are dropping some incredible bars, but my favorite thing might be this part:
The formula is also equally good whether you're coming from mage-types or physical-types (it keys off both Physical and Magic Attack), and Geomancy is equally good as primary or secondary skillset. Perfect all-rounder.
I couldn't decide if I wanted to be a Monk with Geomancy or a Geomancer with Martial Arts, so my main team now has both.
Argath joined up with Zalbaag and got knighted just in time for Warcrime-a-palooza! Everything's coming up roses for Argath in the snows of Ziekden.Omicron said:
Appropriate for the successor class to one of my faves, Geomancer is just a very solid class all-round. Damage for the signature effects is low, but it's long-range, instant, cross-AOE, and lands its status effect riders a lot.
The formula is also equally good whether you're coming from mage-types or physical-types (it keys off both Physical and Magic Attack), and Geomancy is equally good as primary or secondary skillset. Perfect all-rounder.
I couldn't decide if I wanted to be a Monk with Geomancy or a Geomancer with Martial Arts, so my main team now has both.
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