Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
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- Let's Play
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It doesn't use half their health (maximum or current) except by coincidence. I suspect the formula is something like
HP cost = (9HP + character level)
HP healed = 2 x (HP Cost)
Based entirely on grinding experience in the first battle of chapter 1, where Wish takes 10 HP from the character using it, and then heals 20 HP. (you start with 45-ish HP in the first battle). While level grinding, the HP taken goes up to 11 HP, then 12, and so on.
If I'm right about the formula, then at level 30 you're healing 78 HP for a cost of 39. Might be useful in a pinch if you're using Mettle anyways for it's better abilities, but way less efficient then something like Chakra typically.
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- Northern Virginia
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That's how I actually thought FFT worked before I played it.
I mean, given CT and Speed, it basically is how it works, isn't it?
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
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- Bright lights, big city
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- He/Him
Not exactly - it doesn't let enemies make their own moves while you're deciding what to do with a given character's turn AFIK
So it's still ATB but with a better version of the Wait setting on by default.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
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- He/Him
Hester knows the true rage of the veteran tabletop gamer.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
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- He/Him
Dang skippy. Hester knows: In real combat, speed is life. You go slow... you die.
Well, you do have a cannon, and if it can fit a chocobo it can surely fit a human.
I love Darkest Dungeon. Forget the unquiet dead and eldrich demons, the true horror is being fired from your adventurer's gig with a pre-existing condition and no healthcare. Hope you saved those W-9 forms!
- Location
- Portugal
Somewhat belated thoughts on the last update:
Maybe this confrontation with the Cardinal would have been a better place to introduce the supernatural threat of the Zodiac Stones compared to Ramza putting it together early, on the other hand wow what the hell, he really just turned into a transparently horrid demon after the hype of awesome divinity. The comparison to the Cenobites seems quite keen... but also I wonder if the obese undead monster Cuchulainn would be funnier if it had a phase two where it activates Ríastrad and becomes an angelic pretty boy.
In terms of characterization there, I am not sure now whether I misread Ramza, because the way that conversation with the Cardinal was headed before the battle did make me wonder where his earlier motivation or direction went. I mean, it seems like there is fair room to doubt whether Ovelia "accepting their hand in aid" was a matter that she even got a choice on, but beyond that, the note that Ramza has come this far thinking there's no changing the world is surprising, it feels off. It could be I'm misunderstanding, and it should be weighed more as very specifically a response to the Cardinal's persuasion.
It's extremely audacious that Delita got away with executing one of Goltanna's inner circle with accusations rendered on the spot while being someone of previously no renown to anyone in that room. I'm inclined to believe that the reason Delita managed it is that Goltanna saw the opportunity and that it served his goals to believe it, regardless of the truth, so he chose to make use of it. In a way it's even more impressive that Delita did that under this consideration - it feels like one hell of a gamble, especially with Cidolfus keeping his steel close, though Delita likely would have had preparations beyond the immediate scene to make his case, I imagine.
As we open the next chapter, I am honestly, pleasantly surprised that after taking that freaky plunge with the zodiac stone transformation, the political dimension is still going steady and messy in the Goltanna camp. The details in the logistics and human cost of the conflict are pretty dire, and I'm interested to see where Cid being negatively singled out by those on his side for doubting the consequences of how things stand is going to go.
Maybe this confrontation with the Cardinal would have been a better place to introduce the supernatural threat of the Zodiac Stones compared to Ramza putting it together early, on the other hand wow what the hell, he really just turned into a transparently horrid demon after the hype of awesome divinity. The comparison to the Cenobites seems quite keen... but also I wonder if the obese undead monster Cuchulainn would be funnier if it had a phase two where it activates Ríastrad and becomes an angelic pretty boy.
In terms of characterization there, I am not sure now whether I misread Ramza, because the way that conversation with the Cardinal was headed before the battle did make me wonder where his earlier motivation or direction went. I mean, it seems like there is fair room to doubt whether Ovelia "accepting their hand in aid" was a matter that she even got a choice on, but beyond that, the note that Ramza has come this far thinking there's no changing the world is surprising, it feels off. It could be I'm misunderstanding, and it should be weighed more as very specifically a response to the Cardinal's persuasion.
It's extremely audacious that Delita got away with executing one of Goltanna's inner circle with accusations rendered on the spot while being someone of previously no renown to anyone in that room. I'm inclined to believe that the reason Delita managed it is that Goltanna saw the opportunity and that it served his goals to believe it, regardless of the truth, so he chose to make use of it. In a way it's even more impressive that Delita did that under this consideration - it feels like one hell of a gamble, especially with Cidolfus keeping his steel close, though Delita likely would have had preparations beyond the immediate scene to make his case, I imagine.
As we open the next chapter, I am honestly, pleasantly surprised that after taking that freaky plunge with the zodiac stone transformation, the political dimension is still going steady and messy in the Goltanna camp. The details in the logistics and human cost of the conflict are pretty dire, and I'm interested to see where Cid being negatively singled out by those on his side for doubting the consequences of how things stand is going to go.
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- Brittany, France
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- He/Him
Honestly I think this is one reason why the Ovelia scene being added in the WotL was an improvement.
Sometimes in fiction you're faced with a scenario in which a character has no reason to believe what a villain is spouting, but you need the audience to know whether they're telling the truth in order for them to understand the stakes. In some contexts ambiguity can actually just rob the scene of its emotional impact. For instance, it's perfectly in-character for Ramza to refuse to believe any word Delacroix is saying, but if we as the audience don't have that information, we don't know whether Delacroix's speech is just meaningless noises that we shouldn't even bother with because we'll find out Ovelia is already dead in the next scene, or whether he's making something resembling a point. Knowing that Ovelia did indeed agree to "ally" with Delita's faction (however grudgingly) and that Ramza is now refusing to believe something we know is true adds a tragic flair to the scene, while we have a clearer picture of the extent to which Delacroix's speech is a mix of truths ("the princess chose to ally with us," "without our support you lack the power base to enact change"), psychological stabs in the dark that may land home ("you want to oppose your brothers, don't you?") and self-serving lies ("we're doing all this for The People, honest").
To an extent you can say "well it's to keep up the tension until the reveal at Goltanna's court" but that's not truly a reveal; Delita is the protagonist of that scene, Ovelia is not present and asleep the entire time, and all we have to interpret her decision are Delacroix and Delita's words. They could be lying, Delita could have coerced her, etc. Ovelia needs to have a voice, and without the Zeirchele Falls cutscene, she doesn't even appear on-screen to voice her decision. It carries the ambiguity past the point of usefulness and into "wait but am I supposed to read this as Ovelia having actually agreed to work with them or not" territory.
Anyway just my two cents on this.
Symbolically if not literally, I'd say it's when Edea Parries A Fucking Bullet with her magic shield and the entire assassination conspiracy instantly goes haywire.
Oh that's really cool. I was wondering why Cuchulainn warped into the shakespearian 'r endings, but...
Be/hold/Lu/ca/vi/Pow'r/made/ma/ni/fest
Whose/might/o'er/all/Cre/a/tion/once/held/sway
What/non/sense/this? / I /am/the/man/him/self
Or/ra/ther/he/who/once/was/De/la/croix!
The/Stone/the/au/ra/cite/such/pow'rs/grant/To
Rise/a/bove/Man's/frail/ty/a/god/A/god
Who/brooks/no/med/dling/of/fools/Die/and/know/
suff'/ring!
I probably messed up my feet count here but even for someone without an ear for stresses, yeah, this is definitely iambic pentameter. The translators have really gone above and beyond on this, which is largely a piece of completely missable dialogue.
Will have to keep that in mind when we run into more Lucavi.
I'm going to be real with you for a moment here:
I fucking hate the Zodiac system. It is a millstone around the game's neck, an unambiguous negative in my experience of it. It's not enough to drag the overall quality of the game to a lower rank but damn is it trying its best. I
It's a statistic that you pick at the start of the game completely blind, which is fundamentally unknowable ahead of time unless you straight up look up recommended signs online, and can't be changed unlike almost everything else in the game. You can't job-swap or JP-train your way out of it, you pick one trait at chargen completely blind and then you're randomly assigned Suckage against an arbitrary set of bosses in the game. It's obnoxious. It requires me to memorize a goddamned chart that I have to mentally reference mid-combat based on a similarly arbitrary sign just slapped onto every single enemy in the game. I just lost a battle in part because Agrias the Holy Knight got stonewalled by a Thief she dealt 26 damage a hit to thanks to maximum incompatibility. The Gaffgarion fight was arbitrarily harder than it could have been just because I picked the "wrong" character value at chargen without information on which to base that choice.
It's the worst part of the game by a wide margin and it's really fucking lucky that it mostly just only does +25% values either way because if I had to deal with any more +50% variance in major battles than I've already had to I might just flip my goddamned desktop.
Yeah, I've been checking them regularly. The Treasures tab has both of the Zodiac Stones collected so far in addition to Artifacts collected during Errands, but it doesn't have any further information that warranted noting in the actual updates, they're just like this:
It just tells us how we got the stone and which zodiac sign it's associated with, there's nothing there.
The Events tab (which I assume is the "Record" tab you mention, just renamed in WotL) contains brief written summaries of each major plot beat in order, plus an option to replay the associated cutscene. If you're trying to hint that there is something else beyond that to this menu, you're going to need to be explicit, because it's not apparent to me and I will likely never see it. I have 5000 screenshots of the game so far, I don't particularly need to replay cutscenes or read summaries of events I just played through.
That's kind of an interesting topic though, isn't it?
Here are two things that are true:
1) Everyone is always on about how Ramza lacks the power (implicitly manpower, ie armies and money) to effect great change, including Ramza himself.
2) Ramza has already shaped history at several junctures by disrupting Dycedarg and Larg's plans, slaying Gaffgarion, and killing Cardinal Delacroix.
It feels like everyone in the game is suffering from a particular blind spot. I semi-joked earlier about the rise of firearms changing the course of Ivalician warfare, but it's more than that. The very notion of armies is in the balance. We have numbers on Goltanna and Larg's initial engagements; in just four months, we've seen tens of thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of injured soldiers, famine, widespread devastation, and they are both at a complete stalemate. The push of armies isn't accomplishing shit.
You know what is, though? Elite groups of about half a dozen people conducting precise raids to assassinate important targets, seize infrastructure from within, cut off enemy routes, and so on. In other words, the kind of warfare Ramza has more or less accidentally specialized himself and his few loyal followers in. Having a lv 25 Dragoon on the battlefield among 30,000 other men probably doesn't help you much; but it's a tremendous asset when you're trying to sneak behind enemy lines, enter the castle, kill the guards quietly and open the gates from within. And that, it seems, is increasingly what wins objectives in Ivalice. The wounding of Dycedarg and abduction of Tietra, the slaying of each of the Corpse Brigade's leaders, the abduction of Ovelia, her safe transport to Zeltennia under stealth, the slaying of Gaffgarion and Cardinal Delacroix, these are all major, story-shaping objectives that were achieved by small teams of elite warriors, while attempts at large scale maneuver warfare collapsed into a morass of mass casualties battles that failed to shift borders.
What we're witnessing here is a paradigm shift in warfare, and the characters haven't noticed yet. They're not yet aware of how the dynamics of war have changed, and haven't fully adjusted - except perhaps for a few disruptive agents like the conspiracy backing Delita. Even Ramza, one of the spearpoints of this paradigm shifts, isn't aware that it's happening because from his perspective he's just scrambling to do the best he can with the limited assets he has. He's just running around frantically trying to do his best at various flashpoints of disaster and crisis, and probably hasn't even stopped to consider that he's effectively leading innovation in the new meta of warfare in Ivalice.
When Cardinal Delacroix tells Ramza that he has no power, no backing, no ability to influence world events, he's wrong - but neither he nor Ramza can see it yet.
We're basically moving towards Total Medieval Spec Ops Dominance, which is an impressively cursed concept.
God I wish. I even assigned Ramza Taurus and the Taurus Stone is the first we picked up, he should get a sick monster form called something like "Minos, the Labyrinth King."
One of my favorite anecdotes about how profoundly dysfunctional the Confederacy was is that, on multiple occasions, the Confederate Army approached wealthy Southern planters to ask, effectively, "hey we seriously need to shore up fortifications at this location and are short on manpower, could we requisition some of your slaves for help? Again, I cannot emphasize that without this help, our defenses may fall, we will be overrun, the Union will take this territory, and you will lose your entire enslaved workforce, much of your wealth and possibly your life," to which Southern planters inevitably replied: "and cut into my profit margins from harvesting cotton by even one percent? go fuck yourself" the fortifications went unshored up, the Union overran the position, and the planters lost all their slaves.
It's just one aspect of the fractally broken worldview of the Confederacy, but also just an illustration of how the people who have the most at stake in a conflict can also be completely and willfully delusional about the course of said conflict.
I would love to play Vagrant Story someday, but it falls way outside the scope of this Let's Play - if I do "every Square JRPG" we will be there for several more years and never reach the PSX era. Final Fantasy Tactics is, at least, nominally in the Final Fantasy series.
I have started Chrono Trigger, though, and intend to eventually write a post about it, though this may be some while. A long while.
These are definitely very interesting changes, and I thank you for your thorough breakdown as always.
With that said, I'm really struggling to see some of these changes as being the better of the two options on display. To take just the Delacroix dialogue as an example, I went and watched that scene after this post so I could transcribe both dialogues. To compare them directly:
Article: Cardinal Delacroix: "I see Gaffgarion's sword was no match for his words. Then again, perhaps the fault lies with his adversary. Beoulve blood is not given to spill easily. Even when thinned with that of a courtesan, it would seem."
Cardinal Delacroix: "But enough is enough. Your intrusions overstay their welcome. Leave the auracite, and then leave Lionel. A generous offer, and my last."
Ramza: "Where is Lady Ovelia?"
Cardinal Delacroix: "You mean to free her? What then? You've turned your back on your house. A man cannot prosecute a war alone. Forget this bootless struggle. Think you mere will enough to see you victorious? Even will needs force, and you have none."
Ramza: "Tell me where the princess is!"
Cardinal Delacroix: "Gone to Zeltennia. Her Highness has chosen to accept our hand in aid over yours."
Ramza: "You lie!"
Cardinal Delacroix: "Her Highness has taken her first step toward the throne. But she will need a steady hand to guide her, and yours falters. Who better, then, than us to stand at her side? She saw this - why not you? There's no reason you should not join us as well. The thought of besting your brothers holds no allure? We care no less for this world's fate than you. Together we can change Ivalice for the better."
Ramza: "I have no wish to change the world. But nor can I stand by while men suffer and die on the whim of some select few. Do you truly believe you can change the world? Not even I am so naive as that."
Cardinal Delacroix: "That Stone you hold can twist the very weave of nature, to say nothing of the world. Yet I fear my words are wasted on you. Actions speak louder, yes?"
[He transforms.]
Cuchulainn: "You take no pains to hide your wonderment. How I shall delight to watch you die. Each excruciating ecstasy!"
Article: Draclau: "Gaffgarion is not as good as he says... Or was it bad luck? Anyhow, you're good. You have Beoulve blood in your veins. Even if you are a bastard. But, I don't need your interference anymore. Leave the stone here. If you resist, I'll show no mercy..."
Ramza: "Where is Princess Ovelia?"
Draclau: "Why must you save her? You deserted the Beoulves. What can you change by yourself? Don't waste energy. Without power, nothing can be achieved... You're powerless."
Ramza: "Where's the Princess!!"
Draclau: "She's not here. She's left for Zeltennia. She chose our help over yours."
Ramza: "That's a lie!!"
Draclau: "She has begun to think for herself. She felt unsure of you and chose us for obvious reasons to take the throne. Why don't you join us? You want to get the best of your brothers sails, right? We care about the world, too. How about it?"
Ramza: "I don't want to change the world! I just can't allow people to suffer and die because of some elitist's ideas. Change the world? You think anyone can? I'm not that reckless!!"
Draclau: "Ha, ha, ha... You're the one holding the stone. You can change not only the world, but the truth of everything with its power. Since you don't seem to understand, let me show you."
[He transforms.]
Tainted King, Queklain: "Ha, ha, ha! How about it? Surprised? Now, let me have my fun. Let me hear your screams, and suffering death cries! "[/QUOTE]
And I'm sorry, but there's no comparison to me. The latter is just utterly sauceless. A Cardinal of the Church says "Anyhow, you're good" like some common thug's casual banter? "Don't waste energy"? It may be that there are some nuances in felt unsure of you and reckless that convey a slightly different emphasis than the WotL script, but the overall effect of the dialogue is extremely bland and actively drains the scene of its gravitas by having everyone talk in a very casual manner and some utterly bizare word choices, like "get the best of your brothers' sail" which I don't think even is an English phrase that makes sense?
Delacroix turning into a legendary demon prince of myth who claims to hold the power of a god and announcing it with "How about it? Surprised?" just emphasizes how flat and devoid of weight or emphasis the entire thing is.
In any case, this isn't in any way a criticism of your endeavor in breaking down the PSX script or saying that your opinion in this matter is somehow wrong or invalid, but at least in this instance, and frankly in the other few instances in which I ended up looking up the PSX script in the past, I genuinely cannot see the WotL version as anything but an improvement. Where I would say that it does indeed fail is that turning "a 30% tax increase" into "Triple the tax rate" is, indeed, a huge shift in the weight of characters' action that does make Goltanna come across as perhaps more evil than intended; that I will definitely agree is a point in favor of the PSX script as you describe it, but... Honestly that's one of the few points on which I agree with you, at least going from your description and the couple of PSX cutscenes I watched.
Well, the game did just decide to have main story battle enemies do a 5-level jump between our last story battle and the next one, so I can definitely see how the start of Chapter 3 would end up being where someone's playthrough stalls permanently, whether that's because you're trying to max out Ramza or just for general grindiness reasons.
I guess this is the game's way of saying that we should represent Ramza's growth over the past three months that were timeskipped in the narrative by engaging in a sufficient number of random battles to keep up with the rest of the world.
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It's getting increasingly hard to not just keep bringing up Kei's Stand and Watch them Fall quest, even though as a point-of-divergence quest it would be hugely massively spoilerly and also probably irrecoverably warp your view of FFT Ivalice from it's world building and extrapolation.
But it really just reads as the game devs wanted your individual party members to matter, and thus every important engagement involves enough people on either side to count on your fingers because otherwise the plot is just about how Ramza and co never can do anything.
Yeah a few other people chimed in with that exact point, and I think I'd agree on thinking about it more. While the Time Travel is where the game gets twisty, everything with Edea at the end of Disk 1 is where things go into high gear Magical Fantasy Bullshit (endearingly).
You'd think in a world with famous heroes like "Thunder God Cid", who presumably got his title by being some kind of murderblender on the battlefield, these people would put a little more stock in the ability of individual units. Though at the same time, I suppose even someone like Gafgarion could be potentially overwhelmed by sheer numbers despite his ability to drain the lifeforce right out of his foes.
Still, supersoldiers are a pretty important tactical thing to consider even if you do have armies in the hundreds of thousands clashing against each other. Anything from defending chokepoints and VIPs, to just the ability to have superpowered strike teams infiltrating enemy territory to take out key positions. Sure, Comic/MCU comparison, but that's exactly what someone such as say Captain America is best used for.
WE DID IT LADS HE'S PLAYING THE CHRONO GAME
As for long while, do you mean the post, or the game? Because from what I remember barring NG+ stuff, Chrono Trigger is somewhere in the 20-30 hours range at max, it's not too much of a timesink.
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Basically I can only have one game at a time in the, so to speak, "main slot" of my definitely neurotypical brain, and that slot usually goes to whichever Final Fantasy game I'm currently LPing. I've hit some of the main early bits of Chrono Trigger, introducing the time travel and the frog dude, but also I've played it three times in as many months. It is very hard to stay focused on two specific games in parallel, rather than do FFT and then when I'm feeling like taking a break rolling a die between the twelve other games I've barely started and never finished.
On the other hand, it works both ways. Like you said, it keeps Ramza from doing as much damage, but Ramza also took less damage. So long as you keep a decent spread of signs in your party (which you are likely to have just by chance), it's a bit of flavor that really only comes up when someone is tryharding for an optimal sign for every boss fight. There's always something you can do - even the Gaff fight can be handled by simply going for a build that can tank his hits all day, if you're at the max 'neither party can hurt the other very well', let the rest of your crew finish off the ambush, then open the gates and dogpile on the old man.
I'm not defending this, as such, but given the Zodiac Stones, I can see why the designers wanted to make it a mechanical element of the game as well and it's never really impacted my playthroughs significantly.
- Location
- Malaysia
Honestly, the advancement of warfare via specialized units like Ramza's is utterly stalled/never mentioned is probably because the Church literally covered this whole thing up.
Ramza with his units killed a Cardinal. The Church, no matter their internal politics, is definitely not going to let that go easily.
Arazlam literally found the Durai Papers long after the writer of those papers executed for even trying to clear Ramza's name. Pretty sure the spec ops tactic has been used multiple times throughout Ivalice history, but none will be acknowledged because of Church and Crown interference.
Ramza with his units killed a Cardinal. The Church, no matter their internal politics, is definitely not going to let that go easily.
Arazlam literally found the Durai Papers long after the writer of those papers executed for even trying to clear Ramza's name. Pretty sure the spec ops tactic has been used multiple times throughout Ivalice history, but none will be acknowledged because of Church and Crown interference.
Ah, fair, fair. I'm the type to half-juggle a dozen games at once, and then some may or may not just... fall off partway through because of it. Usually because some part of my brain goes "okay but what if instead you replayed the entire Fromsoft Soulslike catalog again?" I'm even currently delaying my FFT playalong to play Dark Souls 2 and Outer Wilds instead, with a side order of "Vampire Survivors now has ALL the Castlevania, gotta play that too".
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Mythologically, Cuchulain was a famous berserker whose body horrifically warped when he went into a blinding rage. An appropriate, if on the nose choice for the name of the first demonic foe the player fights.
It has zero relationship to the Scorpio constellation.
It has zero relationship to the Scorpio constellation.
Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
I always took it to be that Delacroix/Draclau is basically dropping a mask. He stops being a Cardinal of the Church, and is letting the demon under his skin bubble up. He no longer needs to put on the face of some haughty holier-then-thou church official, he doesn't need to impress them.
Because he's a demon, a Lucavi.
And they aren't going to live.
It doesn't go to plan, of course, but it feels very much like Delacroix of the Church is taking a backseat to Cuchulainn the Impure.
Going back to your character quotes, you should consider having Gillian spend four levels learning about terrain, then four more to have her learn how to jump good. The game has a couple of classes that only appear to those who defy gender norms. Similarly, a guy who has four levels of motivational speaker and four of the power of friendship has its own reward.