Agrias doesn't need to climb the village the long way around if she can just get within range of a Hallowed Bolt that ignores the difference in elevation with her target.
I like how anytime the storyline starts to get too comfortable with Ivalice's medieval/early modern trappings, it trots out another badass female character to remind the player that women are made of pain. Probably for the best Agrias and and Meliadoul had to fight; if they teamed up they'd be unstoppable.
I really don't know what to make of this whole beat. I feel like it was trying to show one thing ("Ramza and Delita still share a bond of trust") while telling another ("Delita is a manipulative dipshit even if his true intentions might be good").
I think what's happening here is a vibe I feel like I see a lot in Japanese wartime stories. Ramza and Delita may be working at cross-purposes, but their respective plans haven't hit the point of no return just yet. As such they can still be honorable and have a heart to heart as former friends, because in the hierarchy of male relationships that personal history trumps their current incompatibility as comrades. There's an acknowledgement that neither could sway the other to his cause and an unspoken understanding that they will be enemies, but...it's a moment, y'know?
...and while I'm saying all that, one presumes the reason Ramza was alone in the church is because the entire rest of the team has piled on Agrias two to a limb to hold her back from storming inside and turning Delita into chunky salsa through sheer force of will because he still has Ovelia. And it's kind of a very funny oversight that we stop to have this moment between the two men but Agrias goes completely unacknowledged.
Honestly I kind of wonder how much of all this was Delita hoping he could recruit Ramza as part of his factionbuilding. Like yeah if he knocks off the two older brothers, then Delita can go help sweep this Heretic Business under the rug and Delita can make Ramza the big man in the now-vacant position of "Beoulve patriarch", who would then be part of the Queen Olevia (And King Delita BTW) Faction. So Delita might be willing to risk Ramza stepping on his toes a little bit if he can get the last surviving Beoulve brother on-side when this all settles down.
Like, that whole scene in the church was Delita laying out his Scheme to Ramza, and explaining how it will end the war. It was a recruitment pitch! He was asking Ramza to join his own little Scheming Faction in the civil war, the Delita Hijacks the Church's Queen Olevia Pawn Scheme, without actually coming out and asking directly, which would force Ramza to actually commit to "yes" or "no" to that crazy business.
Similarly Delita is thinking about how he might adjust his Scheme based on what Ramza told him; I dunno he's really all that thrilled about getting in a swordfight with a guy nicknamed "Thunder God", so if Ramza can convince that guy to back off the fighting than Delita might be perfectly happy to adjust his scheme to accommodate that, even if it isn't precisely what he'd planned for, and is maybe a little more awkward politically.
Meanwhile Ramza seems to have decided that whatever business the We're Secretly Demon Guys are getting up to, stopping them from opening a portal to Hell or whatever, fighting that is his urgent and highest priority; that's what he can fix with his buddies and their half-dozen swords, and he's kind of trying to opt out of the whole Civil War because, like, what can he do about it. And, jokes aside, he clearly decided not to trust Delita with the knowledge that Demons Are Real Actually.
They have actual flying castles sitting empty in the sky??? Fuck me why are we bothering with Italo-Frengland down here, someone get an airship up there ASAP.
I really don't know what to make of this whole beat. I feel like it was trying to show one thing ("Ramza and Delita still share a bond of trust") while telling another ("Delita is a manipulative dipshit even if his true intentions might be good").
Entirely possible that both are correct. May just be the season, but I suddenly transposed Ramza and Delita into White Christmas. It doesn't really fit (Bob Wallace is far more cynical, though Delita would certainly milk any injury gained saving Ramza), but my brain makes the connection nonetheless.
They have actual flying castles sitting empty in the sky??? Fuck me why are we bothering with Italo-Frengland down here, someone get an airship up there ASAP.
It's really like an Italo-Frengland with myths about Atlantis and forgotten civilizations, with the key difference being that you can just... walk over and look at the ruins of Atlantis.
this is really beside the point, but Tanya was a moron who thought she was smart, right? That was the premise of that character? Like I only took in the first chapter of the manga, so I'm operating on like a third-degree adaptation, but the whole thing about being a corporate climber, while in the HR department, I was like "oh, this guy's clearly just a moron", but on the other hand I was also really not sure if the author knew about the Business Stereotypes that he was using
this is really beside the point, but Tanya was a moron who thought she was smart, right? That was the premise of that character? Like I only took in the first chapter of the manga, so I'm operating on like a third-degree adaptation, but the whole thing about being a corporate climber, while in the HR department, I was like "oh, this guy's clearly just a moron", but on the other hand I was also really not sure if the author knew about the Business Stereotypes that he was using
from what I've heard the original light novel ends on Tanya dying and being told 'you're a moron' basically, but the adaptations change things and also I'm relying entirely on at best secondhand accounts having read exactly none of it.
Does that mean that we could upset Folmarv's plans by revealing his treachery to Funebris? Eeeeh. We'd have to somehow get into Church territory without dying, and there's always the risk that Funebris asks Folmarv to confirm or deny and Folmarv goes "I assure you your excellency, the power of the Zodiac Stones is very real but it can only help us, would you like to make a cheeky pact with this here friendly angel from the beyond? Look, it even has the name of one of Ajora's disciples!" and then the High Confessor turns into John Carpenter's The Thing.
That's even assuming this guy bothers to listen when the Church's current Number One Enemy and murderous heretic bursts into his office spouting conspiracy theories. Somehow I doubt Funebris' first words to Folmarv would be "yo is this demon shit true", and more along the lines of "holy shit kill this heretic before he kills me".
And Cid has an auracite - I wonder what are the odds that we'll end up in a fight with him in which his nickname of "Thunder God" is made entirely too literal.
Notice how Ramza is rocking a new fit, by the way. I'm not sure when he changed it, or why, but he swapped from his trademark "carapace" purple spiked armor to a teal-and-black combo that's more balanced around his overall frame. It's interesting, if not quite as iconic.
Whoops, as it turns out, your MVP unit in a top tier class can also be the enemy's top tier MVP unit. Reminds me of how seeing certain enemy classes like Swordsmasters or Berserkers in Fire Emblem are often a butt-clencher moment, because having someone who's whole gimmick is "and then I crit and evicerate my target" on the enemy side is a lot more dangerous. They just have to kill you once, after all.
Let's just accept that this will definitely be a loss and use it to at least scout out what the opposition is like. What does Meliadoul's Unyielding Blade ability look like?
…
Meliadoul has an ability called "Crush Armor" that's a ranged Rend Armor that also damages HP and appears to have a 100% success chance.
Ah yes, there's a fun Rake for everyone: first running into Meliadoul and her absolutely bullshit abilities. Sure, Sword Arts can inflict status effects and are probably more useful from a player perspective, but Meliadoul can just point at someone and go "Hippity Hoppity you sword is now destroyed property".
See, my first thought here was does Meliadoul have all the rend skills learned, or only armor? Or does she have some kind of equipment priority depending on rarity/amount of HP it's giving you? Since the mission is a suicide run assassination mission in the first place, if she's going around blowing up armor, it might be a viable strat to just slap cheaper armor from a tier or two ago on everybody so anything that gets destroyed at most gets a shrug, as long as the difference betwen "Breastplate+80HP" and "Iron Armor+60HP" isn't too crippling to your survival.
But Ivalice so far has been a much more… densely populated and thriving world than that of the average FF game, yeah? There are many actual cities, connected by trade routes, within a unified country with several seats of local government. We're not looking at individual, fortified city-states scattered across the surface of a barren, hostile monster world. As a result the impression that's given is that, like… Ivalice is fine, it's large, dense, and thriving, but what lies beyond its borders? That's the undiscovered country, the forgotten eras, where one has to hold frontier marathon to survey even a fraction of the wonders lying about abandoned for centuries.
Has Ivalice been the most seriously populated Final Fantasy game so far? Not that previous games have lacked in civilization or big cities or anything, just look at Midgar, but a lot of FF games have given a vibe of "disconnected settlements surrounded by dangerous, monster-infested wilderness." Meanwhile in Tactics the politics of the game and the multiple massive wars going on, not to mention how generally lackluster monster encounters can be compared to actual humans make it seem like this is a world much more... tamed or dominated than previous ones.
Choco Meteor is cheap, deals solid damage (around 100 at this level), has no cost or cast time, and has solid range. Winning this chocobattle is mostly a matter of ensuring we can physically get to the redobos before they finish raining down destruction on us. Thankfully, we are aided in this by one of Ramza's new skills:
The goddamned Kaioken.
Shout, one of Ramza's new Mettle abilities for his special version of Squire, has him tense his body and surge with red light and a fierce glow, following which he gains all of +10 Bravery, +1 Speed, +1 Physical Attack Power, +1 Magical Attack Power. That's… Kind of a crazy package, isn't it. Tailwind was already good at just +1 Speed, having it automatically max out Bravery and then increase PA and MA? Crazy stuff.
And so Ramza learns his most ultimate ability, and one of the ones that finalizes "wait actually Ramza!Squire is pretty good". I believe he also gets the ability to naturally equip Knight Swords when in the Squire class as well, so it's a more than viable main class option.
Interesting. Ramza is found at church, in prayer, even though he's not just labeled a heretic; his faith has genuinely taken a terrible blow from reading the Scriptures of Germonique. I wonder; is it just the familiarity of habit even absent faith, or is Ramza trying to recapture the connection he lost with the reading of the scriptures, praying to find faith again? Of course, it could be he just knew this was the place to wait for Delita, but - well, he was praying.
For all we joked that reading the scriptures should have given the entire party an instant malus to Faith, one can also argue there's a difference between faith in the church and faith in God. The church's version of events might be false and they're just grabbing for power and also have a demon conspiracy going on, that doesn't mean Ramza and company can't still have some level of belief in a greater being or power.
Ramza: "Is that it? You've come to fetch the auracite for your masters?" Delita: "I am no hound heeling at the Church's skirts. I answer to no one but myself." Ramza: "Meaning what?" Delita: "Meaning I would not think twice of killing you, Ramza, should the hour come.
Damn, Delita really going in cold with this one. If we go by the "both of them are feeling each other out in this meeting" theory, this is probably where Ramza decides not to tell Delita about the whole demon magic stones thing once Delita makes it clear he's willing to do basically anything for power.
High Confessor Zalmour is sitting at the top of the bell tower. The Church is constructed in an "upwards spiral" fashion. Unless we have a very high Jump rating (which would allow us to hop onto that marginally shorter outcropping at the bottom, making the path slightly shorter), our only path to the Confessor is to go the full length of the spiral. There are three Knights posted on the way, two Mystics to disable our characters as we go through, and Zalmour himself, whose Priest Magicks are a combination of support spells and debuff spells; while Zalmour is very high up, White Magick ignores elevation and cover, so I can only assume his Priest Magicks do too. This means we have to make a slow, grinding ascent the long way round, while being thwarted by Knights backed by mages until we reach Zalmour past all these lines of defenses. Difficult? Maybe, maybe not. A huge grind? Definitely.
Hadrian is blocking the only way out for the Confessor.
The scaffolding next to the bells is one tile wide, and Hadrian jumped onto that tile. The same environmental parameter that would make the Confessor difficult to engage for more than one character at once also means that I completely locked him in on Turn 1. He has nothing to do but cast heals, hit with a flimsy rod attack, and hope Hadrian stays Disabled.
Alright be honest with us Omi: did you plan for this result? Or was it just a sudden happy coincidence to find out "wait Hadrian is body-blocking the entire enemy army with his fat dragoon ass"?
See, this is why you don't tell people you want to surrender "oh we've already tried you in absentia and sentenced you to death." Like, Zalmour could be trying to offer literally any concession to Ramza. "You will die, but your soldiers may go free." "Think of young Agrias, whom I will pardon if you surrender." "You will at least be given a chance to make your case, though the outcome be settled." Literally anything. He could even just lie. But no.
RAMZA: Listen man, heads up, the Zodiac Stones aren't just religious relics, they're also containers for the fell Powers of the Lucavi. So if you run into somebody with one then be careful because they might be able to turn themselves into some crazy boss monster with it.
Being fair, exactly that conversation going through Ramza's head might be why he didn't tell his childhood friend about the whole "yeah there's a second secret demon conspiracy in the church involving the stones". Uses the first part of their meeting to feel out Delita, comes to the conclusion that if he did tell Delita about the demon stones then he would absolutely respond with "Bet, Nah I'd Win" and go start eating Zodiac Stones until he turns into the biggest strongest demon.
this is really beside the point, but Tanya was a moron who thought she was smart, right? That was the premise of that character? Like I only took in the first chapter of the manga, so I'm operating on like a third-degree adaptation, but the whole thing about being a corporate climber, while in the HR department, I was like "oh, this guy's clearly just a moron", but on the other hand I was also really not sure if the author knew about the Business Stereotypes that he was using
From what I recall, Tanya is plenty intelligence smart, she's got good instincts, will study her ass off as needed, and has strong tactical thinking even if some of it is "war nerd from the 21st century is sent back into an alternate past so she can apply lessons these people haven't learned yet".
On the other hand, she's very not people smart, Tanya can't read people's motivations or characters worth shit. Hell, the entire reason she got murdered in the first place is the guy she fired pushes her onto some train tracks, and her point of view is just "what I don't get it, it makes perfect sense to fire you for underperforming, you should have just applied yourself better why are you blaming me?" She's a textbook Anime/Fiction sociopath, who... I guess a lot of people latch on to for the humor elements of her constant misunderstandings, rather than the part where she's a pint-sized magical war criminal who's inventing most of the war crimes while working for WWI Magical Germany. Really a lot of Tanya fanfic has that vague Worm Taylor shape to it where it's using the character name and backstory but only half-resembles the original character.
For all we joked that reading the scriptures should have given the entire party an instant malus to Faith, one can also argue there's a difference between faith in the church and faith in God. The church's version of events might be false and they're just grabbing for power and also have a demon conspiracy going on, that doesn't mean Ramza and company can't still have some level of belief in a greater being or power.
I mean, if I confronted a corrupt member of the clergy and he suddenly exploded into a malevolent shower of particle effects to reveal a wretched monster not of this earth that yelled something like "BWARGH, I'M SATAN" but in Iambic Pentameter, well, I'm not sure what my reaction would be, but it wouldn't make me any more inclined to be skeptical of the existence of deities.
this is really beside the point, but Tanya was a moron who thought she was smart, right? That was the premise of that character? Like I only took in the first chapter of the manga, so I'm operating on like a third-degree adaptation, but the whole thing about being a corporate climber, while in the HR department, I was like "oh, this guy's clearly just a moron", but on the other hand I was also really not sure if the author knew about the Business Stereotypes that he was using
Tanya's thing is being pathologically unable to directly say "no" to something, instead being compelled to drop hints and try (and fail) to subtly steer the conversation to them being given a safe, cushy job. This leads to them being progressively given harder and harder jobs as their superiors universally misread their subtle hints of "I don't want to do this" as rabid enthusiasm.
This is because, as you have said, Tanya is a moron who thinks they're smart.
And I'd assumed Reraise to trigger when the character goes down, but no; it seems it triggers when they would next take action, which means instead of getting up with their action several turns away and immediately getting whacked again, the character can take their action right away, so they can move out out of harm's way or take down an enemy immediately! That's very practical, you just have to, like… Look at your downed character and resist the urge to think that it must have not worked somehow and you should quickly Raise them before it's too late. Because that's counterproductive but god does it feel that way.
Check the Rumors tab religiously whenever you visit a town.
Amass a vast fortune of 500,000gil and then land on a city/town on Cancer 1 (the previous date is Gemini 32). Once you've got the money the two blue dots of Gollund and Lesalia make this painless.
Honestly, Folmarv have had his kids around him for their entire lives and he doesn't tell them shit about the Stones, and you think he's going to tell Delita gunning-for-the-throne Heiral about the Lucavi?
Clearly he doesn't see Delita as someone worthy of the Stone.
For Ramza, I think he met Delita there to check the man's allegiance- is he in with the actual Church plan, or is he in with the Lucavi? If he is in with the Lucavi, he probably actually have one of the Stones with him.
Then Delita said he is not with the Church at all, it's just convenient to him.
So Ramza never said a word about the Lucavi. He probably disseminate the Lucavi info to people who actually have an auracite with them, like Cidolfus Orlandaeu.
Rudeness: Enemies can eat your treasure chests and crystals. This actually isn't the first time I've hit that but it just happened again in a fight I was specifically trying to wait for people to disappear, so now I'm mad.
It's not like this scene is trying to tell us that Delita and Ramza are bound by such powerful bonds of friendship that they're willing to allow one another to work on their own paths even if those paths are inherently in contradiction; Delita literally says 'I will cut you down without a second thought if it suits me'
Hum.
A part of me is somewhat sad about that Confessor not getting HOLY'D right off the top of that tower, but throwing heals and support while his strategy falls apart works too.
Meliadoul's outfit makes me think the Temple Knight was considered to be a playable class at one point…
And for some reason I can't help but imagine that she's bald underneath that hood or cravat I think is another name for it?…I might need to look that up.
Either way, the last outfit Ramza wears…
I'm not the biggest fan of it given how cool the purple spikes were, but the colour changes kind of make sense to me: Ramza's regained a sense that he's doing good, that there can be higher powers to answer the horrors the Lucavi would bring, even if he's not about to standby and stay out of their way…
Yeah, I'll add to the crowd that "tell the guy who is clearly hungry for power, however noble his intentions, about the Demon Stone Conspiracy That Gives You Supernatural Power" is a bad plan and it's very good Ramza does not do it here.
Similarly, Delita at least thinks he's capable of playing Xanatos Speed Chess; if Ramza can get the Thunder God out of the way, that's less work he has to do. If Ramza fails, well, he'd have to kill the two of them eventually anyway. I wouldn't doubt that he maybe does have some legitimate fondness for his old friend - he's seen Ramza is not at all like his brothers and he probably would prefer a path where he doesn't have to kill Ramza.
Delita hasn't taken the possibility off the table either, mind.
Anyway, yeah, side quests. Most of them are triggered by rumors in the right place, one is triggered by being in a non-castle town on the right date, and revisiting Goug is worthwhile. Most of the time the dot will turn red to help clue you in, but not always, and some side quests will not open until a bit later in Chapter 4 - this is one of the longer ones if we add in that content, so buckle up.
I'm genuinely curious as to Ramza and company's thoughts on religion at this point. Ramza's keeping his conversations with all these religious foes focused on the conspiracy and the demons, but if the plot had Agrias and the others as canonically alive still there would have to be some real spirited religious debates and schisms going on as they discuss all of this.
Edit: Now that I reread, did Ramza seriously not mention the situation with Alma to Delita? I think with that AND the Lucavi you have to read this as him deliberately holding it back.
