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

The 2.5 mod I'm using removes Divine Ruination and Crush Weapon from Cid's list, so he's slightly less overpowered. A decision I fully support.
 
- though the idea of an airborne poison that can incapacitate an entire army is very, okay why is everyone not using this all the time?
Sooo... the thing is... IRL poison gas got invented, got used like, once, and then everyone just went "hey we have these Gas Mask things" and Poison Gas achieved hilariously little for the rest of the big ol war. Like, it made some soldier's life suck, but on a strategic/operation/tactical level it did basically nothing. It got labeled a War Crime and basically no one has bothered to try to circumvent that at all.

Unlike say, White Phosphorus which ALSO got labeled a War Crime and which several countries have gone "but it's so useful though" and either just kept using it totally ignoring the War Crime label or otherwise weaseled out of THEIR use of it being War Crime O'Clock by playing games with the letter of the law.

EDIT: basically, what I'm saying is, Poison Gas is actually a hilariously bad weapon IRL, it's inconsistent, it's easy to deal with, it's unreliable, it's hard to use at all, and for your reward, you get a very slow killing that leaves the area annoying for YOU just as much as it is the other guy, even if everything goes WELL.
 
Last edited:
My first thought, was that the poison came from one the Lucavci. Demons from hell being capable of creating a poison that's unseen so far in this land? Sure, i could see one of the demons having like 12 scorpion tails each filled with deadly poison or something. Being part of the church, it would be easy enough for them to be like "oh yeah, we totally had a breakthrough in poison technology, our normal human church friends"

But then they mention the moss later on, so i guess it's something everyone could have done at a potential time and just never done before. Unless the Lucavi lied about it totally being "natural moss".

As for Cid, i think it might been to some degree self-serving from Delita. By all account from what i can see Cid is legit that strong of a guy. Delita might have looked at his odds almost alone and went "You know what, let Ramza take the super sword guy away from me, towards the church Pope or something".

It might come back to bite Delita, but better Cid is as far away from his as possible right now.
 
The historical example of this that comes to mind is Admiral Yi Sun-sin, most famous for kicking Japanese arse up and down Korea when they tried to invade in the late 16th Century. Funnily enough, it happened to the man twice. First time he was charged with desertion and served his sentence, and the second time was after he refused to follow a stupid order prompting his enemies at court to call for his arrest. His supporters managed to get his punishment set to demotion and he was placed under the command of a general.

He remained there until his replacement got himself killed and Yi got put back in charge of the Korean navy, where he would remain until his death in the final naval battle of the war.

Anyway, historical tangents aside, Delita has managed to maneuver himself through the various factions pretty neatly. It's interesting, because I think he's managed to portray himself to everyone bar Ramza and Valmafra as just being totally loyal to whatever side while also being minor enough that people just hand him stuff to do without really thinking things through.

He's sort of like a janitor. Every large organisation needs them, but people don't think too much about much freedom to move they've been given.
It's all pretty interesting in the context of how Delita goes down in history as this great hero. Which means, regardless of how his story turns out, in history's eyes he got away with this shit smelling like roses!


Sooo... the thing is... IRL poison gas got invented, got used like, once, and then everyone just went "hey we have these Gas Mask things" and Poison Gas achieved hilariously little for the rest of the big ol war. Like, it made some soldier's life suck, but on a strategic/operation/tactical level it did basically nothing. It got labeled a War Crime and basically no one has bothered to try to circumvent that at all.

Unlike say, White Phosphorus which ALSO got labeled a War Crime and which several countries have gone "but it's so useful though" and either just kept using it totally ignoring the War Crime label or otherwise weaseled out of THEIR use of it being War Crime O'Clock by playing games with the letter of the law.

EDIT: basically, what I'm saying is, Poison Gas is actually a hilariously bad weapon IRL, it's inconsistent, it's easy to deal with, it's unreliable, it's hard to use at all, and for your reward, you get a very slow killing that leaves the area annoying for YOU just as much as it is the other guy, even if everything goes WELL.
Sabaton actually wrote a song about the use of poison gas in World War 1, with a history lesson on how the Russians withstood the gas attack during the guitar solo!


View: https://youtu.be/-AFdwoyNT24

Sabaton said:
In the early morning of August 6, 1915, the German gas batteries opened up and a dark green smog of poison gas crept over the Russian lines at Osowiec Fortress. Read more about the Attack of the Dead Men 👉 https://www.sabaton.net/historical-facts/attack-of-the-dead-men/
 
Last edited:
That last quote should be Duke Larg, not "Dyce Darg".


'Sword saint' (Kensei, 剣聖), for those unaware, is an honorary Japanese title that in real life was used to refer to famous swordsmen - though the one everyone who isn't a hardcore Japanese history nerd is Miyamoto Musashi. Though you could colloquially translate it as 'sword master', the literal translation of 'sword saint' is so much cooler, holy shit. Cid IS That Guy.

Fittingly, the original el Cid was nicknamed "campeador" as in "battlefield" and his name loosely translated as "the master of battles."
 
Sooo... the thing is... IRL poison gas got invented, got used like, once, and then everyone just went "hey we have these Gas Mask things" and Poison Gas achieved hilariously little for the rest of the big ol war. Like, it made some soldier's life suck, but on a strategic/operation/tactical level it did basically nothing. It got labeled a War Crime and basically no one has bothered to try to circumvent that at all.

Unlike say, White Phosphorus which ALSO got labeled a War Crime and which several countries have gone "but it's so useful though" and either just kept using it totally ignoring the War Crime label or otherwise weaseled out of THEIR use of it being War Crime O'Clock by playing games with the letter of the law.

EDIT: basically, what I'm saying is, Poison Gas is actually a hilariously bad weapon IRL, it's inconsistent, it's easy to deal with, it's unreliable, it's hard to use at all, and for your reward, you get a very slow killing that leaves the area annoying for YOU just as much as it is the other guy, even if everything goes WELL.
Well, yes and no. Mustard gas is a contact weapon so you need full body protection, not just a mask. Casualties wrre low, but injuries werrr high, and those who did die died painfully and graphically. Also, the gas tended to stick around, flooding into water, trenches, wells, etc.

In modern war gas is mainly useful to slow down/inconvenience infantry (who need to don protection or fort up in an NBC-sealed vehicle/building or both), and of course massacring people who don't have that protection, like Iranian conscripts or Kurdish civilians.
 
Dycedarg may be a snake, but Zalbaag has no spine. And these are the trueborn heirs of House Beoulve.

What a sorry sight.

It's interesting to go back to first updates and see how the brothers came across then, with Dycedarg seeming a straightlaced "duty and honor" type of guy chiding Ramza for recklessly abandoning his post (but possibly secretly caring about him) and Zalbaag being the cool brother indulging Ramza's youthful drive to adventure.

How mighty have fallen indeed. Or, I guess, revealed their true natures would be more accurate to say.

I'm a little disappointed.

No, no, don't get me wrong - I'm not disappointed in Cid as such. He absolutely lives up to the hype, and seeing him join the party is a genuine "oh shit let's fucking go" moment and I can't wait to use him in battle.

But I thought I would get to fight him.

The game has been hyping him up for hours! I genuinely thought it was to build him up as a threat leading to a boss fight! Like Gaffgarion and Wiegraf before him!

Now he's our ally and I will probably never get to throw down with him in a no holds barred climactic battle. What a shame.

I do think there should have been a battle with Cid before he joins you. Not necessary against Cid, he could have been a guest ally, or we could have had a fight scene controlling him similar to new content for Delita. Either way, his hype would've benefited from demonstrating his might mechanically, not just talking about how cool he is.

Once again looking back, that's what made Agrias joining you for real a small-scale hype moment after she's carried the very first battle with Gaffgarion and contributed to early chapter 1 victories.

Thinking farther on it, I'm actually not sure a battle against Cid (as opposed to guest ally/staged mini-battle) would be a good idea here. His skillset is, well, Wiegraf+Gaffgarion, and you've fought both already, in a single duel even with Wiegraf, so instead of increasing the hype it could have very well lowered it since you'd be treading familiar ground. If there were to be a battle between you two, there'd need to be some kind of twist on the formula...

They can't have found a Cid lookalike on such short notice, so that too must have been part of the plan; they always meant to stage this incident, which means they always planned for Orlandeau to escape.

Could be a Plan B, with Plan A being to just kill Cid and drag his body up to duke's chambers. Seems altogether cleaner, with less loose ends to track. In this case, the lookalike is just a fallback option since you can't count on the motherfucking Sword Saint actually dying.

Well, I guess we'll see what Delita expects Ramza to do and whether Cid features heavily into those plans.
 
The 2.5 mod I'm using removes Divine Ruination and Crush Weapon from Cid's list, so he's slightly less overpowered. A decision I fully support.

I feel like you could take his kit down to just Judgment Blade and Cleansing Strike from Holy Sword, Shadowblade from Fell Sword, and Crush Armor and Crush Helm from Unyielding Blade, and still have an objectively OP unit without making everyone else seem useless or bad.
 
Again, Mage Ramza is still the objectively best choice for him, not the least being the little exploit where He's the only character in the game who can max out Faith without leaving you, because he's the main character
 
I commented in the spoiler thread ages ago, but honestly Omi I had expected you to see Cid joining the party coming. In the Return to Ivalice raids, the first three bosses in the final raid all have one thing explicitly in common: they are Ramza's companions and allies. Mustadio, Agrias, Cid.
 
On the one hand it sounds annoying how Samurai is a physical class in terms of stat gain but a magical one in terms of ability damage scaling, on the other hand black mage with a katana sounds kinda sick. On that Moonveil kind of beat.
 
Mage Ramza also works because
He can get Ultima from Ultima Demons. So can Alma, and Luso although theirs not much reason to get Alma to obtain it in the final battle outside of making a terrifying little sister.
 
Well, I have discovered FFT's job XP caps at 9999 (at least in the display) and battle damage at 999. Focusing for twenty turns with a Monk gets funny :V
 
Well, I have discovered FFT's job XP caps at 9999
If you actually spend all the 9999 JP you accumulated in a specific job, you can then accumulate and spend more. Of course, no class requires that many JP to master (the one that takes the most is Summoner, which is above 9000 but not up to 9999), so that's academic, but it still seemed worth pointing out.
 
Giving Agrias the Rouge with Auto-Haste must have been the devs realizing that TG Cid over here pretty much made Agrias entirely obsolete once we got the Sword Saint in our team. Pretty rad QoL upgrade, because when you start unlocking speedy jobs, Agrias' lagging turn speed becomes far more pronounced and basically making her not viable for late game battles. You can basically get two turns out of the rest of your blorbos before she gets hers.

Cid's entrance basically a shoe-in for that 'Holy Knight' position in the roster. The Rouge basically puts Agrias on par with TG Cid again, even with smaller Holy Knight skillset.
 
Last edited:
But I thought I would get to fight him.

The game has been hyping him up for hours! I genuinely thought it was to build him up as a threat leading to a boss fight! Like Gaffgarion and Wiegraf before him!

Now he's our ally and I will probably never get to throw down with him in a no holds barred climactic battle. What a shame.

We really did need to see him in action somehow before getting him, yeah. Either as an enemy, where we have a massive climactic duel and then all the backstabbing takes place and we can get him as an ally (with bonus points where Cid can see us as a worthy opponent and equal in combat!), or as a guest character where he blenderizes some poor bastards, and then joins in or maybe pulls a heroic sacrifice or something in the last leg of the story.

As it is, just getting him with so little fanfare and with so much of his kit is just. Kind of baffling? I really don't know what the designers thought when they decided now was a good time to put him in your party.
 
If you actually spend all the 9999 JP you accumulated in a specific job, you can then accumulate and spend more. Of course, no class requires that many JP to master (the one that takes the most is Summoner, which is above 9000 but not up to 9999), so that's academic, but it still seemed worth pointing out.

I'm talking about the JXP total, not JXP available to spend. I have no idea what that would be since the job has long, long since been mastered.
 
He has access to all Holy Sword Skills (which he can use better thanks to his superior PA), but he also has access to the entire Crush [Gear] line of abilities we witnessed from Meliadoul, and also Gaffgarion's previously-unique trademark skills, Duskblade and Shadowblade.

He is the Sword Saint. He has every sword skill in the game.

Holy shit.

That's not even counting the fact that he comes packaged with Excalibur, which grants him Auto-Haste. At least that one's transferable. But no, Orlandeau is just Built Different. He genuinely lives up to the hype.

Truly a student of the principal art of Cutting. Yeah, as someone else already mentioned, Orlandeau is another frequent target of modders - usually either nerfing his equipment a bit or removing some skills from his list so he isn't a strictly superior version of other characters. The Tweaks mod I prefer removes a couple of Holy Sword skills and moves the Gaffgarion stuff to 'actually giving Cid unlocked Dark Knight from the get-go' so there's an opportunity cost to giving him all the sword skills; you have to give up a secondary command. this isn't a bad balance between 'living up to the hype' because he's STILL one of the best NPCs to join up, but without utterly obsoleting anyone.

With that said, I do appreciate this avoidance of "superpowerful character in the lore turns out to be less effective in your party" and Cid is a great way to compensate for a lack of grinding or suboptimal builds... but on a game-mechanic level I usually leave him on the sidelines just because, heck man, I'm attached to my blorbos.
 
Hey @Omicron when you get to Limberry after all the detours you'll want to:

1. Switch Ramza to Squire.
2. Equip him with a Black Garb and Nu Kai armband.

Oh and if you want him to be better at using Iaido here's a build suggestion (it's fairly optimized so I'm putting it in spoilers):

Primary: Squire
Secondary: Iaido
Reaction: First Strike
Support: Arcane Up
Movement: Move +2

Runeblade
Aegis Shield
Lambent Hat
Wizard's Robe
Magepower Gloves
 
Last edited:
This is an interesting twist on the poisoning of Doma - though the idea of an airborne poison that can incapacitate an entire army is very, okay why is everyone not using this all the time? Even if this is an invention of Barich himself (he's a Machinist), this would completely change the face of warfare.

Assuming it's something brand new that Barich came up with, it will probably not catch on for much the same reason that World War 1 saw the deployment of tons of experimental chemical weapons and then World War 2 did not - they suck ass, being prone to inadvertently blowing back over your own forces. Barich's Fart Cloud of Knockout Dust is a far cry from the horrors of mustard gas but it's still subject to the whims of nature.

That's their last W of the day. Because now Lipstick-Powered Agrias is close enough that she needs no measly Geomancy attacks to do the work.
-​
306 damage, Jesus Christ. One Archer goes down instantly, one Knight is in critical.
Agrias, whose permanent Haste means she takes about twice as many actions as everyone else, obliterates the enemy BLM with Northwain's Strike. I don't think that poor devil even got to do anything in this fight.
As a field test for Agrias's new accessory this was a tremendous success. Our girl's sword skills are good but her lower PA growth and lackluster Speed meant she never fully lived up to their potential; the Bracer gave her the strength to make her sword skills count but did leave her struggling to cover ground and lacking in actions compared to characters equipped with Hermes Boots (which grant +1 Speed). But now with the Tynar Rouge, she has the +3 PA to make her Sword Skills count and she just finished unlocking Attack Boost from Geomancer, meaning she hits with the force of a nuke, and she is permanently buffed with Haste, Protect and Shell, making her incredibly tanky (and tankier as soon as I swap her back to a heavy armor job) and taking enough actions to offset her lack of mobility.
Agrias goes first and obliterates the Ninja with a 828 damage Divine Ruination. Holy shit.
Agrias immediately follows behind to back her up with a Hallowed Bolt…
-​
…obliterating the Knight's entire bloodline.
Hester and Agrias take the left side of the sluice; Agrias immediately annihilates an enemy BLM
Agrias goes again next, turning the guy inside out with another Divine Ruination, and I decide to close this off in style:

In Warhammer 40,000, one of the many groups of space marines are the Black Templars, an extremely sword-happy bunch modeled on the knight orders of the historical crusades. The Black Templars were founded in the distant past by a space marine named Sigismund, a swordsman and duelist of extremely high skill, amongst whose feats were supposedly included challenging and defeating a full one hundred champions of the traitor Chaos marines during the Siege of Terra.

When Warhammer 40,000 came out with rules for playing the armies of the Horus Heresy on the tabletop, one of the characters they released was, naturally, Sigismund. Sigismund is modeled with his iconic Black Sword, and I'll spare you the details but suffice to say that the summation of Sigismund's playstyle on the tabletop was "if he gets close to enough to touch something (and that something is not one of the God-Emperor's divine sons), it dies."

Now...I'm not saying that the longer this LP goes on the more I think about how Agrias resembles a Warhammer 40,000 character-

>AGRIAS: Equip Chainsaw


-ok maybe that's exactly what I'm saying.

THE THUNDER GOD HAS JOINED THE PARTY!?

Holy shit.

Way back in the FF2 days we talked about how the FF2 incarnation of the Blood Sword was wildly, insanely broken, such that it became one of the things the game was most known for. (Such that it would go on to be Firion's weapon of choice in crossover games.)

Cidolfus Orlandeau is the other piece of Final Fantasy history that occupies that space. He's so blisteringly, unapologetically powerful that he's one of the most famous things about the entire game, after "it's the one you play on a grid." It's likely the reason his boss incarnation in FF14 was such a pain in the ass on release and arguably harder than the final boss of the raid - making a boss version of the Thunder God that didn't play havoc with alliance raids would have been a betrayal of the longtime fanbase's perception of the character.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top