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

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Omicron said:
And so it turns out, to approximately nobody's surprise, that the JRPG Fake Catholic Church is, in fact, a JRPG Fake Catholic Church, meaning it's founded on a lie, its leaders are suppressing dangerous knowledge, they do not truly believe in their own teachings, and they are corrupt and out for power. I suppose I can't really fault Final Fantasy Tactics for it; it's such an early work that I expect this wasn't a cliché back then. Berserk's Conviction arc, the one whose central antagonist is Inquistor Mozgus and which first prominently features one of the iconic early "evil churches" of manga, started publishing in 1997 and didn't introduce Mozgus until 1998. We are, I think, in the early formative period of the "corrupt anime church" arc, before it became rooted in. If any manga/JRPG historian in the audience wants to correct me on this, of course, I'd be happy to learn more.
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I feel like there might have been other Evil Churches in manga history prior to this time period, but I'm also not a manga/JRPG historian so I couldn't tell you if it's actually the case. All I'm certain is of the common (modern) saying: The Church Is Always Evil... In Isekai.
 
Omicron said:
God I love No Chill Ramza. "You will have an offer of mercy and naught more" goes hard. A surprising amount of Ramza's lines do, compared to how low-key he was at the start of the game.
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I like it when we see in game character development. In this case, the whole "watching his ally murder his childhood friend* on his brother's orders" and then bumming around with Gaffgarion for months has affected Ramza's personality... which one might expect but it's not unusual for the main character to be fairly static in games.

*I figure she was probably also Ramza's friend, if not as close as Delita.
 
The Dead Sea scrolls had just entered the public consciousness during this time, and the idea of a false history being swept away by the true history was very much on the writers mind.

"By sword attested, by stone revealed, Their tale can now be told."

This is Ramza, discovering the truth hidden. And in time, Arazlam will similarly discover Ramza's story, "by stone revealed".
 
Wiegraf! What a badass. "What troubled sleep have you known, to speak of my dreams?" is such a baller way to say "Rich little bastard who's never known a trial in his life says 'what?'"

It was shocking to me that, upon scraping a victory out of this fight by rushing him with everyone living exactly as you did, I did actually seem to have killed him! Briefly.
Omicron said:
Isilud has a special class, Nightblade, which the select cursor describes as, "a fearsome warrior steeped in the dark power to which he is bound. He cleaves enemies with a ghastly glowing blade." Which sounds incredibly cool, but in practice he's like a spiced up Knight:
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Hilariously, if I'm remembering right, Isilud's name was localised to the harder core Izlude Tingel, but his class was localised to Knight Blade.

Knight Blade, close ally to

I'm only now realizing that Isilud as one hundred more HP than Ramza does.
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Isilud is also, like any xianxia Young Master, rocking some quality gear. Unfortunately, he also has the Safeguard ability, which means he likes to Rend your gear but is safe from rending/stealing in turn.
 
Classic historian problems for Arzalam. The primary source historical document (scripture of Germonique) you really want is lost to history and you have to piece its contents together from summary, quotes, and description in later historical documents (the Durai papers) which you hope to Ajora are describing the lost document accurately and that the folks you're reading ascertained it's authenticity as well as you would have.
 
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... okay, I know you are mostly upset with the poorly place plot beats, but the difficulty scaling on display with this sequence of battles in a row is making me upset and I'm not even playing.
If you don't know to save in multiple spots and to grind a lot between battles this seems like it can very easily stick you in a situation where your only save cannot possibly clear the third of three mandatory fights.

Meaning that you would need to restart entirely in order to continue, and that is a classic case of old game problems big enough to frustrate me.
 
FFT is really great with antagonists. Granted, most Squaresoft RPGs were hitting it out of the park on antagonists.

But the the repeated battles really makes you go 'Oh shit, not this guy!' with a sense of escalation. At the execution site you don't think 'whatever, I kicked gaffy's ass before' you think 'Fuck, I have no super-guests and there's a lot of fucking troops', then the next battle is 'oh shit, I have to 1v1 him instead of having five people wail on him at once?'.

Likewise with Wiegraf and his sister. FFT battle design is good, especially when it puts you, or your enemies, in incredibly shit tactical situations and just lets the suffering happen.

This brutal chain of fights isn't even a chapter-ending marathon, it's literally two story fights after the last difficultly-spike chain that was so rough Ramza took four months off.
 
I think what bugs me about these instances of teleports away is that in prior encounters it made sense as escape shorthand - there were plausible routes for the villain to flee through, you know? Mainly because it was getting used outside. This time, Izlud is in a fucking vault! You're standing in the entrance! He doesn't even have line of sight to the way out!

Very frustrating. Also, honestly, just have Wiegraf hold Alma hostage and extract the Stones from Ramza that way. That's some full symmetry right there.
 
I disagree with the opinion on Alma's writing though, even when I do agree that giving Alma the Stones is very counterproductive to keep the Stones off of everyone's hands since she is not capable of fighting a group of well-trained knights by herself.

I have said this before, but Alma has been raised with the belief that only boys are trained to be knights, while noble girls are sent to monasteries. Sure other girls can be trained as knights, since the Princess has a team of female knights protecting her, but they are not Beoulves. Beoulve girls do not get the opportunity to be trained as knights, and that must have irked her for so long to be so helpless especially when Eagrose was raided and Tietra was taken. And now she has to help hide Simon while her brother went off fighting the Templarate intruders. Which is why she said that in that scene. It's her personal frustration.

I'm not sure why the heck Alma was in Lesalia in the first place- why in the world Zalbaag took her there when Eagrose is free of being raided with the Corpse Brigade gone. Was Dycedarg that hateful against Ramza's only sister? Did she felt cooped up in Eagrose she begged Zalbaag to take her along to Lesalia?
 
If we're talking corrupt churches on that level rather than just fighting God or something at the end...
Breath of Fire 2 and Shin Megami Tensei II. The latter has the Law end, the one associated with the Mesians and YHVH, full on end the world.
 
Omicron said:
But then.


​
He gives. The two Zodiac Stones. To Alma.

Words cannot express how hard my eyes rolled out of my skull when I saw this. This is just - fuck me, this is stupid. It's the most telegraphed move in existence. There is zero chance we're getting those back. We have effectively already lost the Zodiac Stones the moment Ramza makes this decision, and the entire next bit of the story is just walking ourselves to the point where it actually happens.

I understand that the writers probably needed the enemies to get the stones for plot reasons, so it had to happen somehow, but they could have expended literally any effort at all selling it to the player. I could buy this if there was at least the tiniest attempt at making it sound not fucking stupid. Like, one of the story characters Ramza is accompanied by could step off to guard Alma. Any number of our soldier units could be left behind to act as a close guard, and then be defeated later in a suitably dramatic off-screen battle. Of course, the game can't actually do that, because it has to make sure that it's technically possible to dismiss every non-Ramza party member and play the entire game solo, but I don't know, maybe it could have given us a temporary guest member before reaching Orbonne?

I guess not. Ramza is just handing the two precious stones that his enemies are after to a defenseless child whom he says to stay behind, unprotected, and burdened by a severely injured old man.
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Genuinely what was he thinking. Frankly if 'throw the stones in the bay and let the crabs party with the Lucavi' is now on the table he should be sending Alma to go rock-skipping regardless of whether he comes out of the vault alive or not, as of now there truly appears to be zero non-harmful usecase for the stones and every reason to keep them out of the hands of his enemies no matter the cost.

But really that's all fluff around the fact that when you're writing a story the first and foremost consideration you should have before even the verisimilitude of the setting or whatever is whether or not a particular turn is Taking The Piss and this is very much a case of that. Every dude and his donkey Ramza fights can teleport an arbitrary distance away to safety, these motherfuckers might as well teleport the stones out of his pocket and teleport his pants off for good measure while they're at it.

Omicron said:
Ramza: "Were it justice you desired, I would gladly help you see it done. But what you truly want is power. Power beyond that of any army. You would free the people only to enslave them anew with the demonic power of the Stones!"
Isilud: "*Demonic* power? The Zodiac Stones are vessels for the *gods!*" We would use their divine miracles to guide the people to greater glory! There is nothing *demonic* in that!"
Ramza: "Few would consider it divine miracle when a man is made a demon. Or do you pretend not to know that their power transformed the cardinal into a Lucavi?"
Isilud: "What nonsense is that? The only demon I see here stands before me! Was it not you who murdered the cardinal for the Stone he possessed? Not that he would have lived long gathering the Stones behind our backs as he was!"
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I kind of love this exchange because without the benefit of the protagonist viewpoint this is effectively Ramza claiming that he killed the cardinal because a ghost made him do it and Isilud is responding "dude... what?"

Omicron said:
Anyway the enemy Archers take turn just dunking on Mustadio who immediately goes down again.


Fuck's sake.​
IT'S FINE. I'LL JUST RAISE HIM AGAIN.
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who among us has not hit the live-die-repeat loop in an RPG at least once

Omicron said:
The bastard proves shockingly resilient and quite evasive, including this shrewd move above: By placing himself with his back against a downed character, he can't be cornered. Nobody can occupies Gillian's tile or the Summoner's, the arch is too high up to hit from the flanks, and I can't access a tile adjacent to Gillian at low elevation and therefore can't use a Phoenix Down to raise her. This means Isilud has managed to escape the flanking scenario and force a 1v1 with Hadrian.

Unfortunately for him, this means he is now in a 1v1 with Hadrian.



The closest our man has yet come to defeat.​
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I can't believe Hadrian is the Estinien of this LP - he has no idea what's going on or who any of these people are and he has nothing particularly important to contribute to the conversation, but he has the air superiority of a peregrine falcon and the raw destructive capacity of a gorilla on bath salts.

Omicron said:
Ramza: "Wiegraf! You live?"
Wiegraf: "I have lived for this, Ramza. How long has it been since last we met?"
Ramza: "Then you were a warrior who fought to make your dream a reality. Now you are only a thrall of the Church."
Wiegraf: "What troubled sleep have you known, to speak of my dreams? No matter how sweet, a dream left unrealized must fade into day. Only with power can dreams be made real! I see the truth of it now. What good, dreams, without that power? You think me a thrall? So be it! Your envenomed words succor me, for when at last you yield - as you must - their poison will consume you!"
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You know this dialogue is extremely elegant and pleasant to read with compelling turns of phrase, but I think it would be much better if it sucked and these two were arguing at primary school reading level.

Ramza: "Wiegraf! You're alive?"
Wiegraf: "Yes I am."
Ramza: "I can't believe you work for the Church."
Wiegraf: "Yes."

Pure pottery.

Omicron said:
Motherfucker, the Stone also speaks in iambic pentameter.

Or, wait. It doesn't?

Fuck, I'm bad at this. Let's see:

God/Stone/Bear/er/with/me/now/do/treat

That's nine feet, one short, and it feels like the stresses should be God stone bearer with me now do treat, which would be a trochaic whatevertheninemeter is? Hm. Tricky. Maybe my breakdown is wrong.
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I'm going to disagree with Omicron on the idea that the Corrupt JRPG Catholic Church wasn't a cliche at that point; by that point there had been 3 different Shin Megami Tenseis and another couple Megami Tenseis, each with a Corrupt JRPG Catholic Church (and/or Christian religion in general) as one of the bad factions, @csjorm mentioned Breath of Fire 2, which had came out 3 years earlier, and as such the genesis of that cliche in video games on its own far, far predates Final Fantasy Tactics.

I'm not going to complain about that, I'm not exactly an Organized Religion fan, but FFT isn't anywhere close to the front of the bandwagon on that.
 
As far as evil churchs go, there's also one in Phantasy Star IV (1993), but it's really more of an evil cult, and a short-lived one at that, than the proper Evil Church setup.

There's also an actual church, but it's completely legitimate and the worst that you can say about its hierarchy is that they're not especially kind to outsiders demanding the immediate use of their holiest relic.

On the other hand, it's composed of green aliens that worship fire. So maybe that got it an exemption.


EDIT:

There's also a very short-lived evil church in Chrono Trigger (1995), which again borrows aesthetics from the Catholic Church, but it's not really a church or even cult in the sense of being a place of even corrupt religious worship.
 
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Omicron said:
[Elder Simon slumps into Ramza's arms, his life fading.]
Ramza: "Elder Simon, no!"
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Yknow, I normally try not to go all "ha ha why didn't anyone just use a phoenix down on Aeris" but this dude held it together through a bunch of dialogue and three whole fights, before running upstairs to catch Ramza before he finally bit it - a good Cura probably woulda done him wonders.
 
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Yeah, where does the Evil Church trope come from, and why is it always Christian/Catholic coded? I vaguely remember reading something about corrupt Buddhist monks in Japanese history as a sort of root cause, but then why not Buddhist motifs?
 
Kuja said:
Yknow, I normally try not to go all "ha ha why didn't anyone just use a phoenix down on Aeris" but this dude held it together through a bunch of dialogue and three whole fights, then running upstairs to catch Ramza before he finally bit it, a good Cura probably woulda done him wonders.
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Omi does have a White Mage on hand, right?

This may also means that Simon wants to die here- he kept the Germonique Scriptures' secrets for so long that giving it away to someone he trusts means that his responsibility is done, and he can rest now.
 
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