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

Well, good to know.

Also, someone refresh my mind: I remember being told to avoid pushing Faith above, I think 80 on non-Ramza characters? I just hit that on Gillian thanks to self-preaching, so I'd like to confirm whether that is the actual number where I should stop.
 
Well, good to know.

Also, someone refresh my mind: I remember being told to avoid pushing Faith above, I think 80 on non-Ramza characters? I just hit that on Gillian thanks to self-preaching, so I'd like to confirm whether that is the actual number where I should stop.
80 is safe. If you want to know, the desertion threshold is a specific number, namely 95. EDIT: But as the below said, 85 or higher makes the game nag you about it. A similar system applies for Bravery, where the cutoffs are 5 Bravery to desert and 15 Bravery to get nagged.
 
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Is this like the Pokemon's trading system, where you have to have trained a Pokemon at a specific level for the traded Pokemon to hear you, except this time you can't push Faith/Bravery points higher because the blorbo then finds your entire team lacking and wants out?
 
Presumably, if your unit's Faith is sky high, they decide Delita's super-special church conspiracy is the tits and leave to join it.

If the game actually doubled down and made that happen, it would have my eternal allegiance. Instead of my regular allegiance it has now.
 
I don't know and I don't want Omi to sacrifice a blorbo to find out. Can someone more knowledgeable explain so we know why this course of action is to be avoided?
 
Isilud takes Alma hostage so that he can ransom Ramza by asking for the book with the forbidden teachings.
Consider an alternative: Isilud just had his cheeks clapped and he has no reason to believe that Wiegraf will do any better, so even if Ramza doesn't have anything valuable right now he's probably going to get something valuable through Various Acts Of Nosy Fuckery eventually. Having a hostage is just hedging against Ramza's likely future exploits.

Also, even if Wiegraf does manage to kill Ramza, Alma is still a valuable hostage due to her other two brothers.

I don't know and I don't want Omi to sacrifice a blorbo to find out. Can someone more knowledgeable explain so we know why this course of action is to be avoided?

If a unit has too low Brave then they're a coward who can't handle being in the posse of one of the country's most wanted criminals. If they have too high Faith then they're unable to reconcile a life of violence with their devotion to the gods. In either case they leave the party forever.
 
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Honestly, there's really no way to justify the teleporting away other than with "well, actually, they technically could to it if they had the right abilities setup". Having said so, that's really more of a setup than any other game with this annoying trope in it does - in most other games, you can't point to the gameplay and say "see? The abilities, right there?", you just have to take it.

I mean, honestly, I don't think the presence of in-game Teleport actually matters to the discussion at all? If we want to be technical, we should start with how none of those enemies actually had Teleport in their builds to begin with, so even going by in-game logic they shouldn't have been able to use it.

In any case, the game doesn't treat the casual ability to teleport around as a part of the setting. We don't have a scene of Ramza teleporting behind Wiegraf and unsheathing his katana, we don't have Agrath threatening the captive Corpse Brigade soldier that escape is useless, they have people positioned to watch over all possible teleport locations. And so on.

It is possible to imagine a game where it fits. One about ninjas, perhaps, waging a shadow war mostly fought in quick skirmishes where one side gains an advantage and another retreats because everyone involved is a master of escape. FFT is not such a game. It uses teleport as a shortcut to "they escaped", and I don't think the ability to get teleport reflects on it one way or another.

This whole discussion about how artificial and frustrating the repeated escapes despite you clearly defeating them in gameplay feel make me think about how Fabula Ultima, a JRPG-inspired TTRPG, handles this trope. Basically, Villains (like Wiegraf and Isilud, important NPCs with goals that oppose ours) have a certain number of Ultima Points, which they can spend to reroll checks and escape from the scene after being reduced to 0 HP.

Double Cross has a similar take on it: there is a special enemy-only power that allows escape from battle once per adventure (so it is strictly limited, you can't repeatedly escape the heroes). The thing about it is that it's fully integrated into the combat system, with proper stats tying into standard rules. So, that power has Timing: Auto. Normally, it's a bad thing because it means it can be used at any time, up to and including after the damage roll was made but before damage was applied, allowing the enemy to exit stage left at the last possible moment... Except there are other powers, available to players, which inflict a status effect that prevents the target from using Auto powers. So, if an enemy tries to pull this shit on you, you can, in fact, say, "No. No you don't".

(Now, there are various ways to enable the enemy to use the escape power anyway as there are standard powers to remove status effects and an enemy power that grants outright immunity to a given status effect, but it's still funny that cutscene escape can just be blocked if the GM forgot to build a proper combo for that.)
 
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I'm rereading the latest update again, and I kind of noticed that the Church seeks out Wiegraf here, instead of the other way around.

And then he was given one of the Auracite on the get go? When we barely knows whoever else possesses the Stone aside from Delacroix? Who, might I add, is also a well-known veteran of the Fifty Year War just like Wiegraf although his notoriety is more because of his Corpse Brigade days.

The lineup of stone bearers is currently suspiciously very peasant-friendly.

Is that the Church's Zodiac Braves plan in progress? Not the Lucavi one, the actual Church plan. Because no way Folmarv does not give some lip service to those questioning the relevance of an outsider given access to one of the holy stones almost immediately after he joined the Templars.
 
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Maybe, but then the game perhaps shouldn't have led with Milleuda, who escapes our first battle in the normal way: By turning around and leaving while Ramza is arguing with Argath. In that event, the game just transitions from the battle screen to the same screen, but with the generics gone and everyone in a set position that allows for Milleuda to escape. The game shows you that it knows how to do a diegetic escape, and then everyone afterwards teleports away using the actual teleport animation that characters with the Teleport ability use in-game.
Remember that the entire conceit of the game is this historian dude reconstructing the historical account based on newly discovered information. So Arazlam is taking basic information like, "Ramza and Izuld fought here. We know neither of them died, because they show up later. But we don't know how they got from point A to point B." And so teleportation therefore represents a gap in the historical account.

Contrast that with Milludia physically leaving, because I guess we have testimony that Ramza and Co. let her go. You could also apply this to Delita abducting Ovelia at the start of the game, or Izuld with Alma - there are accounts of how they got away so those methods are shown. Teleparts are Arazlam throwing up his hands and going, "Fuck if I know. Magic, I guess lol."
 
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From my position of having played five minutes into the future just to check out the next cutscene and then turned it off before it was over so I wouldn't have even more game to cover in my next update, I have the answer to this question, and it's not going to satisfy you.

Do you remember this specific line from Elder Simon?

Elder Simon: "With this book, you can expose their misdeeds! You can win… Alma's freedom…"

Isilud takes Alma hostage so that he can ransom Ramza by asking for the book with the forbidden teachings. Now, that is not an action that makes sense, because at the point he took Alma hostage, he did not know Ramza would have the book, or indeed that the book even exists, but "having taken Alma hostage" narratively puts him in a position where, when Ramza leaves Orbonne Monastery, a Templar agent can show up and say, "give us the book and you'll get your sister back," whereas if he hadn't taken Alma hostage the Templars could not do this because the only thing they have to trade for the book would be the Stones, and they're obviously not willing to part with them, book or not. And Isilud obviously couldn't have used Alma as a hostage/ransom against Ramza at the Monastery, because Ramza did not have the book yet.

So that's the answer: Isilud abducting Alma impulsively for no clear reason means the Templars can then hold her hostage and demand in exchange for her life an item Isilud did not know Ramza had at the time and had no means of expecting he would acquire. It is a contrivance in the purest original meaning of the word: One event was contrived to happen so that another event occurs which could not have happened without it.
You just kicked his ass up and down the temple, he needs something to try and threaten you if you spend the points for Horizonal Jump +800 and start trying to orbital strike his escape okay
 
Remember that the entire conceit of the game is this historian dude reconstructing the historical account based on newly discovered information. So Arazlam is taking basic information like, "Ramza and Izuld fought here. We know neither of them died, because they show up later. But we don't know how they got from point A to point B." And so teleportation therefore represents a gap in the historical account.

Contrast that with Milludia physically leaving, because I guess we have testimony that Ramza and Co. let her go. You could also apply this to Delita abducting Ovelia at the start of the game, or Izuld with Alma - there are accounts of how they got away so those methods are shown. Teleparts are Arazlam throwing up his hands and going, "Fuck if I know. Magic, I guess lol."

This explanation has been brought up a few times (by me, even, in one of the previous updates), and each time I read it, I dislike it more and more as it starts to feel like a bandaid applied over the underlying issue. It's a very common phenomenon in fandoms where the criticism of narrative problems is addressed with headcanons and possible in-universe explanations

I mean, you could apply the same logic to any problem with the story. Why did Ramza leave his sister with the stones? There is nothing in the papers, so Arazlam made something up.

The underlying issue here is that several times in a row now Omicron has won decisive battles against tough opponents only for them to escape and, in this instance, accomplish their strategic goals as well. It's frustrating, and that frustration wouldn't be fixed entirely by having bespoke cutscenes depicting the exact method of their escape (it would've made the sequence somewhat better because it wouldn't be such a blatant example of the plot invalidating your play, but the issue would still be there).

"Arazlam gave up" is a funny explanation for, say, Wiegraf's first escape, but repeating it over and over becomes grating.

(Also, it's not like the game does all that much with the framing device. The idea that we're playing through secret history of the world is important thematically as it sets up the dramatic irony of Ramza becoming branded a heretic and ultimately forgotten by history, probably because he's just a Squire, but the story itself is told fairly conventionally. Including several scenes that, realistically, wouldn't be in the Durai papers, like the clandestine conversation between Gaffgarion and Dycedarg or some scenes from the perspective of the Corpse Brigade, so "Arazlam only shows what's written in the papers" doesn't work anyway. At the very least you'd have to assert that he's willing to embellish the record for the sake of drama, and in truth the game just isn't interested in being limited by its imaginary medium.)
 
The real reason it's teleporting is because the only other movement ability is jumping.

And seeing the villain Hulk jump away after a beating is silly. :p
Point, but also

Picture the hilarity of Isilud responding to being beat by just leaping off the top of the screen, Dragoon Style, and showing up in the next cutscene by landing on one of Wiegraf's men killing them instantly before taking Alma hostage
 
then he was given one of the Auracite on the get go?
Which is why I said, back when the scene added by WotL was presented, that it would make far more sense for Wiegraf to have been recruited back when Fort Zeadken exploded, more than a year ago in-game: so that he had the time to prove himself to the Templars and they'd be justified in having handed a Zodiac Stone to him. This was the assumed canon for everybody until WotL came out, with some interpretation even going "the Templars actually had a hand in saving Wiegraf when he was being pursued by Zalbaag at the end of Chapter 1" to really cement why he might have been more receptive to their proposal than otherwise. Showing him being recruited right before Delacroix's death messes with that more sensible timeline to create a rushed, less believable one.
 
Which is why I said, back when the scene added by WotL was presented, that it would make far more sense for Wiegraf to have been recruited back when Fort Zeadken exploded, more than a year ago in-game: so that he had the time to prove himself to the Templars and they'd be justified in having handed a Zodiac Stone to him. This was the assumed canon for everybody until WotL came out, with some interpretation even going "the Templars actually had a hand in saving Wiegraf when he was being pursued by Zalbaag at the end of Chapter 1" to really cement why he might have been more receptive to their proposal than otherwise. Showing him being recruited right before Delacroix's death messes with that more sensible timeline to create a rushed, less believable one.
Honestly, this implies that Folmarv, and the Templars by extension, holds the most power in the Church faction. Delacroix probably backed his decision to give Wiegraf the Stone (because easy target for another Lucavi to latch onto an unsuspecting human, with his grief and thirst for vengeance), and the Cardinal basically runs Western Ivalice by this point since they don't have centralized power structure like South and North. The Pope-equivalent Funebris can try to argue as much as he wants from Mullonde, but Folmarv and Delacroix are the one with the military strength here.

Ramza crushed Lionel's leadership, but the Templars are still out there.

They even ransacked Orbonne, one of their own monasteries. That one will probably be buried under 'the Heretic Beoulve ransacked Orbonne!' or some nonsense, but this is basically the Templars going rogue. Or this could actually be standard Templar behavior, I dunno. Izlude seems pretty damn chill at killing his fellow churchmen.
 
Bruh what is this


Turbo-Grind, that's what it is.
Basically the Onion Knight works like this: The Onion Knight stats increase with Job Level; to increase the Job Level you have to Master other Jobs (Squire and variants, Chemist and 2 other Jobs excluded), gaining 1 Job Level for every 2 Mastered Jobs. When Mastered this Job has absurd stats, but it's as said a turbo-grind.
Then, when a character has Onion Knight as their Job they can't equip any Abilities, but in exchange they get to equip every (and I mean ALL of them) equipment they want, and they have access to horribly overpowered exclusive equipment. Sadly to get that equipment you need to play multiplayer (so IIRC you're SOL on emulator). In the Android/iOS version you can also get the equipment in the post-game (so you need to finish the game) by buying it in the Poacher's Den, as these versions don't have multiplayer.
 
PPSSPP actually supports WotL MP. There's even a small group with a PvP balance mod running tourneys with it.


So in theory, Omni could also do the MP content if he really wanted to.
Well, TIL that multiplayer is possible on emulator.
Probably the Onion Knight grind still insn't worth, but at least the MP rewards are there if someone want to get them.
 
Well, TIL that multiplayer is possible on emulator.
Probably the Onion Knight grind still insn't worth, but at least the MP rewards are there if someone want to get them.
Can't speak for PPSSPP, but pretty sure most GBA emulators have long let you do things like "just run two emulators at once and link them up for multiplayer". Wouldn't be surprised if you could do similar for PPSSPP, maybe even duplicate your save file and have them beat each other up for multiplayer loot.

Heck, just in terms of Playstation products, there's fan servers for PS3 Demon's Souls that can be accessed on emulator.
 
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Which is why I said, back when the scene added by WotL was presented, that it would make far more sense for Wiegraf to have been recruited back when Fort Zeadken exploded, more than a year ago in-game: so that he had the time to prove himself to the Templars and they'd be justified in having handed a Zodiac Stone to him. This was the assumed canon for everybody until WotL came out, with some interpretation even going "the Templars actually had a hand in saving Wiegraf when he was being pursued by Zalbaag at the end of Chapter 1" to really cement why he might have been more receptive to their proposal than otherwise. Showing him being recruited right before Delacroix's death messes with that more sensible timeline to create a rushed, less believable one.
Except if Delita and Wiegraf ever crossed paths while both are working for the Church, things would probably get very messy, as each might hold the other responsible for the deaths of their sisters. Sure, Ivalice is a big country, but I'd think the important conspirators would have to meet every so often.

Wiegraf being taken in only at a very late stage means that Delita is busy doing Black Ram stuff within Goltanna's army while Wiegraf is working in the templarate, which makes it not too likely the two would meet.
 
Wiegraf being taken in only at a very late stage means that Delita is busy doing Black Ram stuff within Goltanna's army while Wiegraf is working in the templarate, which makes it not too likely the two would meet.
There's still the problem that @Egleris points out, which is that timeline gives little time for Wiegraf to prove himself to the templarate, so it makes it seem as if they gave him a holy stone because... they like his face or something?
 
There's still the problem that @Egleris points out, which is that timeline gives little time for Wiegraf to prove himself to the templarate, so it makes it seem as if they gave him a holy stone because... they like his face or something?
Folmarv seems to have some idea what the stones want in a bearer and found a guy who was both good at fighting and undergoing cataclysmic levels of tilt. Dude came pre-pointed at Ramza and it seems like the Lucavi take over at least a bit. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that, really.
 
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