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

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Flare said:
To quote a very weird movie, "The gun is good". And all Tactics games see to make that true.
In FFTA Moogles, owing their mechanical aptitude, are the only race that employs guns, with the Gunner Job harnessing the mighty power of "just shoot 'em in the face". Blessed with the ability to use guns and little else (they have surprisingly good defenses, both physcial and magical, and bad everything else), the Gunner can imbue bullets with a variety of elements and status effects in their pursuit of bodily harm. Thanks to the fact that guns have all the range (range 8 for most of them) and the Concentrate ability, Gunners can also use effectively quite a lot of abilities that are otherwise limited by accuracy and/or weapon range, though low stats will hurt a bit. Not to say that their own abilities are bad, attacking and applying status at the same time is very good, and when you can Charm or Stop enemies while also hurting them you cna see why Guners are good despite their stats.
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You can actually take this a step further! Ultima Charge, learned from the Mog Knight job and technically the strongest attack Moogles have access to, uses your weapon range and doesn't actually care what weapon you have equipped! You can fire it off at range with a gun instead of being limited to the measly melee range of the Mog Knight! Though, this does kinda illustrate one the other problems with FFTA. It's optimal to level up as a Mog Knight for the best overall growths (or Thief/Juggler for the all-important Speed growth), but you never actually want to use anything other than Gunner the rest of the time because of the amazing range... But definitely not while leveling because the growths are so lackluster.
 
Hey so, I don't know if this is the best place to post this but since it's a technical issue that's limited to this thread I hope it's okay.

I've been catching up on your LPs since I am waaaaaay behind, and I finally got to VI, but I noticed that all the images in this threadmark are broken. I thought it was an issue of the Wi-Fi I was on at first (was on campus until just now) but after getting home and opening it up on my laptop the images are all still missing.

I don't want to ask you to go through and fix all the links since that's a lot of legwork, but if there's an Imgur album or a snapshot of the original threadmark that someone could link to that would be great. Without the images it's kind of hard to tell what's going on, especially since it's so early into the game.

If it helps, I checked the next threadmark and it seems those images are fine. I think it's just this one threadmark that's borked.
 
Karyis said:
Hey so, I don't know if this is the best place to post this but since it's a technical issue that's limited to this thread I hope it's okay.

I've been catching up on your LPs since I am waaaaaay behind, and I finally got to VI, but I noticed that all the images in this threadmark are broken. I thought it was an issue of the Wi-Fi I was on at first (was on campus until just now) but after getting home and opening it up on my laptop the images are all still missing.

I don't want to ask you to go through and fix all the links since that's a lot of legwork, but if there's an Imgur album or a snapshot of the original threadmark that someone could link to that would be great. Without the images it's kind of hard to tell what's going on, especially since it's so early into the game.

If it helps, I checked the next threadmark and it seems those images are fine. I think it's just this one threadmark that's borked.
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what the actual fuck this is like the fifth time this one specific update broke, what the hell
 
@Karyis I have reuploaded Final Fantasy VI, Part 2 from the root gdoc I wrote it in, which also functions as the image hosting service for my screenshots. It appears that, at some point, two divergent versions of the gdoc were created - one of them has multiple images dead, the others kind of weird (like they're lower resolution than the original screenshots?) and the text formatting is fucked. I don't know how this 'cursed' update variant came to be, but I think not noticing the divergence and reuploading from that gdoc instead of the true gdoc every time the forum version broke is why I kept having issues with it.

Hopefully, it should now be restored, and more than this, it should hopefully stop breaking, which it has every few months for the past year. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You don't have to worry about the legwork of rehosting the images, I literally just copy my update from the root gdoc and paste it in SV's reply window, it takes thirty seconds if there isn't a technical issue.
 
Omicron said:
Duke Goltanna rules over the Duchy of Zeltennia. We haven't been to Zeltennia yet, but from contextual cues, it's the province 'above' Gallionne (Duke Larg's province) on the map; I believe one character makes reference to Zieklaus Desert marking the boundary between Gallionne and Zeltennia. In ancient times, Ivalice was made up of seven kingdoms which were then unified, another oddly specific trait it shares with A Song of Ice and Fire.

Yes, this does mean that if the map is oriented North-Top/South-Bottom, Duke Larg commands the Order of the Northern Sky which operates in the South, and Duke Goltanna commands the Order of the Southern Sky which operates in the North. For this reason I think everyone who's suggested the map was instead oriented with East up to is right, it's the only way this makes sense.
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Zeltennia is to the east. In Chapter Two, the reason why Ramza and company were moving east to make for Fort Besselat in the first place was because they were assuming Delita was working for Goltanna, and the fastest way to get to Goltanna's home province from Orbonne was through Besselat.
 
Omicron said:
@Karyis I have reuploaded Final Fantasy VI, Part 2 from the root gdoc I wrote it in, which also functions as the image hosting service for my screenshots. It appears that, at some point, two divergent versions of the gdoc were created - one of them has multiple images dead, the others kind of weird (like they're lower resolution than the original screenshots?) and the text formatting is fucked. I don't know how this 'cursed' update variant came to be, but I think not noticing the divergence and reuploading from that gdoc instead of the true gdoc every time the forum version broke is why I kept having issues with it.

Hopefully, it should now be restored, and more than this, it should hopefully stop breaking, which it has every few months for the past year. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You don't have to worry about the legwork of rehosting the images, I literally just copy my update from the root gdoc and paste it in SV's reply window, it takes thirty seconds if there isn't a technical issue.
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I can confirm that it's working! And I'm glad it wasn't hard. Funny how that happened--I hope you're right and the issue is gone for good.

I've been really enjoying your LP and all the theorycrafting you've done; the ATB system was never my cup of tea and that's largely kept me away from the FF series. But your covering of the games so far has been so fun it's making me want to dig up my own copy of V and VI and try giving it another shot ^ ^
 
Maria said:
It's Dycedarg.

We have known him so far as the one pulling the strings on behalf of the Northern Sky faction. Sending Alma there is probably his way to keep an eye directly on the Princess while keeping his half-siblings out of Eagrose.
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He's certainly a prominent suspect, but I'm not sure we can yet say it's definitely him. For a start, we don't know what Alma was told about what happened, nor what she might think is different or outside of what she was told. We also don't, in fact, know which of her sibling's she's more like -- it's natural to assume that she's principled as Ramza is, but, well, Ramza assumed that of his brothers, and looks how that turned out. Those two work out to it being very unclear, at this point, how loyal to Dycedarg and/or willing to work with him Alma actually is -- and Dycedarg presumably also isn't sure of that, particularly after what happened with Ramza.

There is, therefore, the question of whether he'd trust Alma with that plan, and whether she'd go along with it if he did, once she could potentially get the Church's protection from him if she turned on him faster than he could silence her.

illhousen said:
Given that the main source of super units so far is Holy Knights (and Fell Knight), I feel that the church should factor into the analysis.
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...
[facehoofs]
Yes, that seems pretty obvious.
Now that you've pointed it out.
Why I didn't think of that, I don't know, but thanks!

And the Church is already its own power block, one that transcends the various feudal realms and not not explicitly (so far as we know, IIRC) rely on heredity for its positions of high power. That, hm. Yes, that would presumably have a significant effect, but unfortunately I don't have time to ponder extensively on it at the moment.

Terrabrand said:
Part of the interesting question at that point is; when we're being introduced to the idea that Delita was not the 'true hero' of the events by our narrator dude, is that merely to say that Delita was given undue credit for actions actually undertaken by Ramza, or is it meant to imply that Delita is not in truth heroic at all?
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It could also mean "By most measures Delita was indeed more the true hero of these events, but since that's already the conventional view, admitting it would be worse for the sales of my book about the Amazing Lost History I discovered". I mean, we don't exactly know much about our in-universe storyteller and their integrity and motivations one way or another, do we?
 
It is an interesting thing, the narrator Arazlam. We aren't truly actually seeing Ramza's perspective, but instead Arazlam'a re-telling, which does explain alot of thing.

It does sorta neatly explain why we don't get too see much idle banter like in other FF games or why we don't get to read what other people are thinking. Arazlam, is presumely using the Durai paper's as his main source of information, but if he's a good historian he's assumedly trying to cross-reference that with other papers and diaries from the civil war as well.

We don't get to see the banter Ramza has with the rest of his party(of glorbos), because it was never written down in the Durai papers. Arazlam can't find the info required to truly flesh out the rest of the people Ramza is with.

Arazlam like everyone else in this story is subject to the whim of what the nobles and Church, whom are the presumed primary writers of the era deigns worthy to write down. This is why Tietra barely had anything about herself. Because no noble would think Tietra as someone worth writing down about save "She died, setting of the tale of Delita"

Delita becomes obviously important in the historical context, so despite being a commoner, he probably gets historical records written about(I'm gonna guess the Church primarly), but Tietra stayed as a "normal" commoner who's sole worth was that she'd be tied to the future hero of the civil war.

And so, Arazlam have the choice about over-inflating what he knows about Tietra, or try to portray her as accurate as possible to what little information he can find.

It also why there's no actual internal dialouge. Because Arazlam doesn't know. He can write down what they said, what actions they took, and while you can infer a lot from that, you can't actually tell what they were thinking. Like Omnicron did with Ramza's brother this update, Arazlam writes down what he did, but he doesn't know if the Brother didn't care or needed to drink wine in order to get liquid courage.

Whoever Durai is, I'm gonna presume that they will be a member of Ramza's party we've yet to meet and journey with him to kill God on the moon or something. Because as last update shown, this is very much a final fantasy game, and where there's final fantasy there is a final God-like boss.

This does also neatly explain the time gap. Presumely Durai was asking Ramza about his previous time up to meeting Durai, and during the time skip, Ramza was in a depressive-daze and doesn't fully remember anything.

Ramza:So it was, that i saw the pillars of my life crumbling down, and i ran away like a coward to afraid to confront them

Durai:And what happened then?

Ramza:I don't remember much after that, untill i saw Delita at the monastery.
 
Reese said:
He's certainly a prominent suspect, but I'm not sure we can yet say it's definitely him. For a start, we don't know what Alma was told about what happened, nor what she might think is different or outside of what she was told. We also don't, in fact, know which of her sibling's she's more like -- it's natural to assume that she's principled as Ramza is, but, well, Ramza assumed that of his brothers, and looks how that turned out. Those two work out to it being very unclear, at this point, how loyal to Dycedarg and/or willing to work with him Alma actually is -- and Dycedarg presumably also isn't sure of that, particularly after what happened with Ramza.

There is, therefore, the question of whether he'd trust Alma with that plan, and whether she'd go along with it if he did, once she could potentially get the Church's protection from him if she turned on him faster than he could silence her.
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I point at him because Dycedarg is the one in charge of the Beoulve estate when Barbaneth got sick, being his eldest son. Which means even his half-siblings' education is under his control.

Dycedarg sent Alma to Orbonne like a parent sent their children to boarding schools, expecting her to write home like any other children in boarding schools do. If his sister wrote about the Princess in her letters, well, that is an update for him. The Princess is not a warrior in disguise, she's as much a kid as Alma is. If he told her anything, it would be that the Princess Ovelia Atkascha studies there as well, and she should befriend her or something. Alma did exactly that.

There is more than likely some manner of convoluted politics behind that decision, but Dycedarg doesn't need to tell Alma any of that. Heck, Barbaneth probably even approved the decision because he probably didn't know how to raise daughters when he only had sons before, especially with his entire life is filled with the Fifty Year War. Sending off daughters to monasteries while the men are trained for war is probably the norm for him.
 
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Reese said:
<snip>
And the Church is already its own power block, one that transcends the various feudal realms and not not explicitly (so far as we know, IIRC) rely on heredity for its positions of high power. That, hm. Yes, that would presumably have a significant effect, but unfortunately I don't have time to ponder extensively on it at the moment.
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The Church is at least one side with the Cardinal. The big question is if the brewing War of the Lions might be causing internal splits (since its drawing members from across the entire country), if the Church will stand united on its own, or if they might throw their power behind a faction.

Reese said:
It could also mean "By most measures Delita was indeed more the true hero of these events, but since that's already the conventional view, admitting it would be worse for the sales of my book about the Amazing Lost History I discovered". I mean, we don't exactly know much about our in-universe storyteller and their integrity and motivations one way or another, do we?
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Er, we do know about the in-universe storyteller (he's in the character glossary). He's the descendant of that one lecturer that the Orator's Sleep skill is based off of. The big question is who wrote the Durai papers, which is what the guy is basing his stuff on.

EDIT: Ninja'd
 
Sa'kage said:
It does sorta neatly explain why we don't get too see much idle banter like in other FF games or why we don't get to read what other people are thinking. Arazlam, is presumely using the Durai paper's as his main source of information, but if he's a good historian he's assumedly trying to cross-reference that with other papers and diaries from the civil war as well.
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And it also nicely explains why we can get something like little cutaways to Dycedarg and Gaffgarion. Ramza would have no knowledge of what's going on behind closed doors far away, and the Durai papers would be unlikely to cover those events in detail (unless said Durai happened to be eavesdropping on the entire conversation, but that feels a bit out thete), but there are existing historical documents, and with the Beoulve family being the ones who once took in Delita, only to later betray him by killing his sister, it makes sense that some of their actions and motivations would be written down.

For Arazlam, this is likely a case of combing through known events and trying to find which ones are most relevent to our tale of Ramza here, and finding events or dialogues that all of a sudden make more sense with the inclusion of Ramza as a historical actor.

All of this does kind of make me wish that we had a copy of the Tale of Delita the Hero in the codex or something - in universe this story would be understood through the lease of a previously widely accepted narrative, and that would be coloring the perception of any theoretical readers, while we only have Arazlam's summary in the opening to go off of. I get that it'd probably be enough, but it'd be cool to have an updating list of widely understood facts or events to compare what we're seeing to.
 
Does this mean Ramza's existence in the Hero's Legend is literally as 'childhood friend of Delita the Hero' and literally nothing else was ever mentioned of him afterwards? I can get bhind that the official records of Ramza probably stopped after Ziekden but how do you even include a random Gaffgarion's meeting with Dycedarg and put in a probable discussion regarding Ramza in there?

Was Ramza harboring Ovelia from Zierchele to Lionel is mentioned in the historical texts as 'the Princess left with her Knight Agrias to go seek the Cardinal's assistance in Lionel while our Hero adventured elsewhere'? How the heck does the Princess heading to Lionel coincides with Mustadio's part in Zaland then? The Knight Agrias stumbled onto a man accosted by a group of suspicious men in Zaland Fort City and decided to assist him, and then agreed to travel together to Lionel with the Princess' consent?

Like, sheesh I know piecing together different anecdotes to make a cohesive set of stories is a specific skill of certain type of historical researchers, but that's quite reaching just to piece the parts where Ramza's presence fits in.
 
Reese said:
It could also mean "By most measures Delita was indeed more the true hero of these events, but since that's already the conventional view, admitting it would be worse for the sales of my book about the Amazing Lost History I discovered". I mean, we don't exactly know much about our in-universe storyteller and their integrity and motivations one way or another, do we?
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Honestly, the fact that we're not given the historical version of events to compare with - the same way a random student picking up the Durai Papers without having any knowledge of the history period it's referencing would - makes it difficult to say which parts are exaggerations, which parts are narrative licence, which parts are guesswork and which parts are "filling in the blanks" to history.

It brings to mind a large number of historical movies and TV shows to me - a lot of the events shown are very much impossible for the tv show creator to have sources for and are 100% creations of the screenwriters, but many of them are presented with a undertone of "well, this could have happened when nobody was watching".

And, of course, there's always the chance that this is a Gladiator situation - yes, Emperor Commodus was known to fight in the arena, and yes, he was killed by a slave, but unlike the film tries to present it, those two events had no relations to each other, and the majority of what the films presents is vastly the invention of the movie.

I really think that any discussion of the actual historical weight of the story by anybody other than Omicron ought to be left for the end, when we'll have a general idea of the "historical events" that would have had to have happened for this to be a believable historical chronicle, and then try to puzzle out which parts of the rest should we consider as confirming other existing documents and which ones are purely information provided by the Durai papers themselves and nothing else.

To stay in the Dycedarg example: suppose that his plot to kill Ovelia is something that historians have speculated about, but never found any actual proof of; then the Durai's paper would provide proof in the form of Gafgarion's words to Ramza, and the scene with Dycedarg and Gafgarion is an addition that is the equivalent of an aside in the papers - "as our readers would know, many have speculated the truthfulness of the accusations against Dycedarg Beoulve, but thanks to the paper, we can now say that the famous mercenary Gafgarion being known to have spent some time at Beoulve manor during the period of these events is confirmation the Durai papers tell the truth", with the actual discussion being left as an exercise to the reader. There's plenty of spots in the story that could be interpreted in that way.
 
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I think the most important implication of the narrative of FFT being a true story filtered through unreliable historical records written by people with agenda is that Delita is a Holy Knight because the church said so.

Same for Ramza being forever Squire.
 
Ramza being a squire on paper but having some very strong, not squire abilities in his version of the class, would lend credit that he was really something else and it's just the historical records marking him as a forever squire...
 
I am genuinely unsure what the spoiler was, since I've not played the game myself and thought I was simply engaging in analysis and the thread's discussion. So I have simply deleted the entire post for safety purposes.

Apologies if I got outside unfo mixed into my knowledge somehow.
 
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Tirfarthuan said:
I am genuinely unsure what the spoiler was, since I've not played the game myself and thought I was simply engaging in analysis and the thread's discussion. So I have simply deleted the entire post for safety purposes.

Apologies if I got outside unfo mixed into my knowledge somehow.
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I think it's that you made a comment to the effect of Delita becoming "King" in your post. You're not the first one; a couple of other people have made the same remark before. I didn't comment on it at the time because I think it was an honest mistake of either 1) misremembering the opening cutscene as telling us Delita will become King (it doesn't; Arazlam only describes him as a "hero" who ended the war), 2) remembering "Delita becomes king" as a plot point from the Ivalice Raids of FFXIV and getting it mixed up with the intro of this game that doesn't say as such, or 3) making a logical leap from "hero who ends the war" to "becomes King of Ivalice" without previous knowledge and not realizing that it's not explicit in the text. The problem is that drawing direct attention to it would almost definitely lead to confirming whether it's a spoiler or just a guess expressed a little too confidently - it wouldn't be the first time that someone in my thread makes a prediction about the plot of a game and people mistake it for revealing spoiler knowledge.

It's ultimately not that big a deal, when I see someone look like they 'slipped up' and gave out spoilers without realizing and no one else has picked up on it I just compartmentalize it in a little box labeled 'they were probably just saying that as a guess to the plot of the game rather than revealing prior knowledge' and don't let it impact my own theorizing. It's one reason why I try not to keep close track of who in my thread has or hasn't played a given game before even though it's usually pretty obvious. I'm only saying all this because it's the third time 'Delita becomes king' has come up in a casual comment so I figured I'd lay it out.
 
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