No matter how many times I play this game, this line always hits hard. 10/10, no notes.
It hits so hard in fact that long before playing the game, I'd already heard that line in the form of
@Kei's Quest
Stand And Watch Them Fall!
(I haven't read the fic, but the title cropped up often enough in my eyesight that when I got to that line I immediately thought 'wait, I've heard this before.')
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".
oh my fucking god I hadn't even thought that this AI-running potion-chugging coward was draining potions out of
my precious limited supply, fuck, he deserved everything he got
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.
I have been informed that Wiegraf's sword skills are tied to his sword, and so if you Rend/Steal his sword he can't use them and becomes trivial to defeat, which on the one hand sounds extremely funny but on the other hand I don't know if that's really how I want to play the game, seems a little slapstick
It's been a while, but I vaguely remember that this was not one of the things that gave me trouble.
Write Delita off as a loss, fall back and use the choke points to funnel the enemies to you piecemeal. Kite as necessary.
100% this. The way they made the fort blow up using in game graphics is dope.
Yeah, I'm grudgingly in agreement here. I don't think the new cell-shaded CGI cutscenes are necessarily a bad idea
in general, but having watched both versions thanks to a YouTube walkthrough of the PSX version, the in-engine game just works better and has a really impressive impact considering its graphical limitations.
I think that's an intentional narrative choice here. With Ramza walking out dazed into the snow, and with him talking about walking away from his life as everything fell apart, I think after Ziekden he just... stopped caring. Odds are he walked the past year largely in a daze, not caring at all what goes on in the wider world, just going day by day. I think if you asked Ramza what he did the previous year, he'd struggle to answer anything beyond the most general details.
We jump right into the fight at Orbonne because, after seeing Delita, who by all rights should be buried under tons of rock and snow, this is the first time he's truly felt present since walking away from that killing field.
And just in general, I have to admire how much work Tactics does with the characters given how little time it spends with them. If you think about it, we only see them immediately before and after battles, with the occasional mid-battle dialogue and rare cutscene between them, but already we have such a good sense of Ramza, Delita, and Argath - even Agrias and Gaffgarion, for how little we've seen of them, we already have such a strong sense of their party dynamics.
It feels like they realized they needed to make every line of dialogue with these characters count, and the writers put their goddamn all into making it so.
It's really impressive!
Considering how much of the worldbuilding they had offload to a literal in-game wiki so that the player could really grasp the political stakes, and that this is necessary in part because the game totally lacks incidental dialogue with NPCs that would normally be used to convey that kind of information, the fact that the character writing is this efficient is commendable. There are still a bunch of details of the characters that we need to gather from the in-game wiki - everything about Dycedarg and Zalbaag's history and reputation, for instance - for those characters we don't spend a lot of time with, but for the ones that get the focus it's a really rich and textured narrative.
Is it bad that I think that his abandoning of Alma--his full-blooded sister, as opposed to his half-brothers--makes him a dick?
I think he has an excuse with the trauma he just went through, but it's definitely something that could be criticized.
But also... what would he do? Walk home, say nothing to his brothers, take her and leave? Break in and steal her away? And what after, have her be a camp follower for Gaffgarion's mercenaries? Drop her in a city somewhere?
Maybe he thought leaving her to her schooling would be a better fate for her. Or maybe he never thought that deeply about it at all. We haven't gotten deep enough into his head at this point to really make a call on that, I don't think.
It's not ideal.
I think there are a few things going for them here - one is that Alma is also Dycedarg and Zalbaag's sister, and
if my takeaway that "Ramza's brothers actually cared about him, they just wanted to get him over his weird commoner liking issues" is correct, then by extension they also care about Alma, and they'll take good care of her still; she just lost her best friend but nothing can change that. Another is that all he would have to take her into is the life of a wandering mercenary, which isn't ideal for a 14-year old girl who hasn't trained for war. And finally, Ramza is probably
believed dead - the fight at Ziekden ended up in both sides wiping each other out and then the gunpowder store blowing up and taking out any survivors. That's probably why he can afford to just go around the country openly working as a mercenary under a false name, because nobody is looking for him.
If he actually went back to Eagrose for Alma he would most likely be forcibly taken in by his brothers rather than allowed to leave again. And he can't go back to the life he used to know, where his own brothers betrayed him so deeply.
But yes; it'd absolutely be worthy of a callout whenever he and Alma meet again.
Estuans interius
Ira vehementi
Estuans interius
Ira vehementi
Sephiroth
Sephiroth
I was going to say something about how it's incredibly funny that both Final Fantasy games in development during 1996-1997 accidentally ended up doing the same 'friend from your old life dramatically vanishes into a fire' beat, but I'm an idiot; that cutscene did not exist in 1997.
Which means it's the 2007 WotL animators deliberately doing a Sephiroth homage on purpose. Which is less funny but an interesting example of the metatextuality that developed in later FF games.
Completely incidental: I'm strangely amused by the idea yet again of how translations need to read into the famously Implicit nature of Japanese dialogue. When Delita says "You whoreson dog!" in the WotL translation, in Japanese he just says "Argath! You!", and it's the sort of thing where old fansubbers would have put in "Translator's note: 'you' in this case is angry and derogatory". (貴様, which I'm sure many would be familiar with as "kisama".) So to translators, it's basically an instruction of "Insert insult here".
I do love a good, hearty "KISAAAAMAAAAAAA!"
Amusingly when I was only a little Omicron, manga translator's various attempts at translating "kisama" in French where how I was introduced to a variety of naughty words I didn't see in any of my children's media - usually I think the default translation was "
enfoiré," which is similar in tone to the English "you bastard."
"Pro wrestling heel" might indeed be a better comparison, although I should mention I don't follow wrestling other than by cultural osmosis, so I might be missing nuances. But the idea is Argath is not putting on any airs, and he's just being a Bad Guy saying "you suck, you suck" over and over, rather than being especially creative with the insults.
The job of a heel is to draw heat from the crowd, and that means they have to actually
inspire hate, they can't just rely on their actions; so they'll taunt likeable characters, they'll insult the crowd itself, they might do big evil monologues but they might also say the (PG-13, slightly more elaborate) equivalent of "And fuck you guys, I hate you, go fuck yourselves" with a particular dramatic flair.
So I think it fits for Argath here, although in-character he's not doing this
that on purpose, he's just being his awful self.
For Ramza's characterization, he's sounding more like a young person eager to prove himself (or at least tag along on the mission) than in the previous chapter. Ramza is essentially going "Me, pick me, I want to go too!" like an early-episode shounen hero. It's a strange and quite sudden (from the player's perspective) change from the polite Generic Ramza in most of Chapter 1.
Oh, that's really interesting. That doesn't match
at all with my read of Ramza as of this time, which is - as others have suggested - that he's kind of cold, emotionally flattened by what happens to him, that he's been going through his sellsword life on autopilot and it's only finding out Delita is alive that's stirred him back to something like wakefulness; him going 'Pick me, pick me!' is kind of jarring.
*Looks at levels* Gosh, they're low. I know I overlevel, but I don't know I've ever hit this level at less than twice yours.
Keep in mind that I'm coming off three, arguably four Final Fantasy games in a row where one of my main gameplay issues was "I can just go through this completely braindead, the mechanics are not necessary except for a few specific fights, and so engaging with the gameplay feels pointless." So I'm only grinding as much as I feel I strictly
have to in order to defeat the next main story encounter.
I might have to deviate from that just to get more JP to unlock more Abilities to extend the field of gameplay and make my own available tools more fun, but in terms of "keep fights within the narrow range of 'just winnable,'" this has worked well so far! It's also required me to treat the objectives as strictly themselves - "Defeat Wiegraf" and "Defeat Argath" are what the objective says, and my strategy must be optimized to kill the VIP as quickly as possible, because I simply cannot tackle the full encounter and defeat everyone.
Which is its own
kind of fun, but I'll probably move from that and try to grind levels and jobs so I have more freedom of action and can take encounters as a whole, if only so that I am not forced to miss plot-relevant mid-fight dialogue.
On a side note - I personally always took the point of view that the various Orders of the Sky were basically how the armies of Ivalice were organized. While led by nobility, not everyone in it is a knight. Or if they are, they are running on the game mechanics definition of knight, which just means they hit job level 2 on Squire.
It sort of
has to be this way, just, like, logistically. There literally aren't enough nobles to man the four Orders, and so far they seem to be the main form of organization of armies in the kingdom.
It's just that Barbaneth literally says Delita joining the Akademy was a unique exception that made some people very mad, so at the very least "the members of the Northern Sky Order that come out of the Akademy"
have to be nobles. And then maybe they recruit commoners under them, who become part of the Orders? It's what makes the most sense to me.
Also the Lionsguard is, yes, a reference to Game of Throne's Kingsguard. In the PSX version Agrias is mentioned as a Knight of St. Konoe... somewhere I forget where.
It's incredibly funny how much
A Song of Ice and Fire appears to have impacted the WotL translation. Like, the first episode of
Game of Thrones came out in 2011, WotL came out in 2007, so it obviously can't have been influenced by the TV show; but if you were sort of 'clued in' to fantasy it was kind of The Big Thing of the time, as I understand it, and it's clear the translators were actively borrowing from it and referencing it.
Well strictly speaking it's "St. Konoe Knights" but yes.
They weren't the best translation team out there.
i mean there is a worse possibility
which is that they
were and wouldn't that be saying something-
The monks are actually Dominicans. They know kung fu for unrelated reasons.
why dominicans specifically
are franciscans unable to use kung fu
For anyone who isn't aware:
In the original translation "Tis your faith and birth that wrong you, not I" was "Don't blame me, blame yourself or God"
I don't know which is more accurate but goddamn the original line is raw.
As you may notice if you read the thread (which it is absolutely okay not to), this was pointed out early and has in fact become something of an in-thread meme
See, it's not too bad, you just need to not kill bosses too fast, injure them but try not to one-shot them, leave a couple turns here and there in case there's a time gated dialogue, sometimes punch your buddy in the face...
Okay, maybe the mid-battle dialogue triggers are sometimes that bad.
I'm torn, because the fact that mid-battle dialogue
happens is really cool, it hugely enhances these dry tactical encounters and gives a lot of characterization enhanced by the heat of battle, but also the fact that you can miss them and that the easiest way to miss them is by playing
too well is just, there has to be another way?
Like, I play FF games mainly for the story. Which means that, going forward, I'm probably going to have to adjust my playstyle towards a grindy, "eliminate the whole encounter even in assassination mission and make sure not to kill bosses too fast" playstyle, which makes me a little sad?
Actually, I'm surprised autopotion didn't come up, having safe but low damage classes (thief, archer, melee classes with throw stone) who on attacking him causes him to net-gain HP is a real speedbump at times.
Notable, the battle is still winnable because somewhere between leaving Ramza and this battle he loses like 40 brave, making his auto potion only trigger 30% of the time.
But when the RNG goes against you, it makes you hate him so much more.
Yeah, I spotted Argath's Auto-Potion early and kept worrying about it fucking up my plans, resetting my progress on getting a fast kill and leading to the unhurt Knights and Black Mages closing in and wiping my squad while they futilely tried to kill Argath faster than his Auto-Potion could heal him, but that... never materialized. He never actually
used Auto-Potion.
Missable plot content really has become a running pet peeve in this thread, huh?
It's not at all the "growing trend in then-modern FF design" that I expected, but it is what we have. It's impossible not to talk about, even if past a certain point it just becomes How The Game Be.
Since you keep mentioning this: it's just the standard gil payout for battles. There's a formula for random encounters, and I believe it's the same for story battles.
Since story battles are pre-determined for enemy type/count and levels, they should always give the same exact amount. There's no secret timer or score that influences how much cash you get from looting post-battle.
War trophies (might be named different on PSP, it's the second reward screen you sometimes get) is also the same every time. I think it's just a way for the devs to give you extra stuff.
They're arbitrary too, just what ever the devs decided you get for the battle. Two potions and 1000 gil, or an iron sword, always the same every playthrough.
Okay, thank you for telling me. The "Bonus Coin" banner specifically plays out an animation of spinning numbers, so I was wondering if there was a randomized elements, and it's apparently not an interesting or important part of the game to warrant a Wiki entry, so I just had no idea how it worked.
Mmm, I'd sooner attribute it to gameplay not perfectly fitting the story than to a deliberate thematic framing.
One of the striking elements of FFT so far is that the narrative is yet to reference magic in any form that I remember. Aside from the details of battles themselves, going solely by cutscenes and dialogue, you can exclude magic from the story entirely with little to no changes.
About the only consequential use of magic that we see is Wiegraf's inexplicable teleportation, and I'd argue for it to be non-diegetic. Since the devs couldn't know beforehand his positioning at the end of the battle or positions of other units present, actually programming a full escape sequence could be difficult and potentially comical if he had to go the long way by a winding path shoving all your units and half of his aside in the process. So I would interpret his escape as just "exit stage left" direction with details omitted for clarity.
That leaves us with precisely zero magical acts that are actually present in the narrative. Argath didn't set Tietra and Gragoroth on fire together, and even the big explosion is accomplished through black powder rather than a grand demonic summon or big fireball.
We've complained about a similar issue in FFVII and FFVIII with materia and junction respectively, and I think the root cause is the same: they, along with FFT jobs, exist as a gameplay element, a point of mechanical complexity, but the story the writers wanted to tell do not call for them to exist, and so they don't.
Perhaps that will change, and we'll meet an actual witch referencing her prowess with setting people on fire, but I doubt Ramza would respond by saying that he always respected the power of mages fighting by his side or that he's one himself if you leveled him up that way.
Totally in agreement so far.
One thing that I have been thinking about going through the main story encounters is that, to the extent that mages are featured in the makeup of enemy parties... They very much feel like a
tactical choice?
Like, even discounting the fact that the plot never talks about magic and magic users aside from Wiegraf's teleportation, mages are presented as somethin like a part of a balanced tactical unit; they're not rare and unique wizards whose mystical power grants them a unique station above mere mortals. Rather, when a bunch of knights of the Order show up somewhere, they put forward a front of physically tough sword-wielders, and have in the back a couple of people trained in offensive magic use. When we first meet Milleuda, she's arguing with her two White Mages, gets warned by a martial unit of our approach, and proceeds to form up with the White Mages in a support position for the martial classes.
I do get the feeling that magic in this setting
exists, it's just... One weapon system that has to be integrated into a combined arms strategy. Magic is not
special, Black Mages and White Mages and Time Mages have specific, dedicated roles in a combat unit, and if you group them together instead of an all-powerful magical steamroll you'll just have a bunch of squishy wizards struggling to keep up with the enemy, so magic is just something that you work with and integrate into small, small-scale, integrated combat units for which it is merely another combat role.
And it would be really interesting if the game's narrative did anything with that! But I don't think it will, since our characters are basically mechanical blank slates and you can run All Five Knights just like you can run All Five White Mages, so it'd be impossible for Ramza to have a chat with Gillian about what it's like being the party's White Mage.
Which is one of many reasons why I don't think FFT will dethrone
Shadowrun: Dragonfall and
Shadowrun: Hong Kong as my favorite tactical RPGs, I'm afraid to say.
