Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
Cid Thunder God? More like Chad Thunder Cock, am I right?
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Cloud's story really smacks of two people having different ideas for a crossover. Everything with Aeris is a perfectly workable "they would find each other in any world" story, albeit with the caveat that Aeris runs off at the end without a real resolution, but the intro is deadass "fr bro this is Cloud Finalfantasy he's a lil under the weather." That's the kind of thing that happens when two writers are handling different scenes and there's nobody catching the dissonance.
Even the art of Tacticloud seems to be aiming for the idea of a character port-
-as it looks much more Ivalice in nature rather than duplicating Cloud's original gear. Maybe someone just really, really wanted to do an isekai story and couldn't be talked down.
Sorry to any Rapha/Marach fans I may offend with such erasure, but their story is pretty abrupt and...kind of not very interesting?
Even the art of Tacticloud seems to be aiming for the idea of a character port-
-as it looks much more Ivalice in nature rather than duplicating Cloud's original gear. Maybe someone just really, really wanted to do an isekai story and couldn't be talked down.
A part of me wonders if Beowulf and Reis should have replaced Rapha & Marach in the previous chapter. With some minor rewrites, Barrington wanting to control a dragon could replace his wanting to control Rapha's mantra, with Beowulf being a formerly loyal knight who turns Barrington for his greediness controlling dragon-Reis. Take that and bolt it to the story of the current chapter about regaining Reis' human form and they'd have probably one of the stronger subplots in the game.
Sorry to any Rapha/Marach fans I may offend with such erasure, but their story is pretty abrupt and...kind of not very interesting?
One belated thought that I had which I thought would be funny would be if once you recruited Cid, he never gains any EXP or JP; after all, he's already the Thunder God, General of the Southern Sky, wielder of Excalibur - he has nothing left to learn, LMAO. He's long been at the top of his game, and while he'd still be deliriously OP, the game would be presenting players with a potentially interesting conundrum - use the sword saint to roll through challenges, or replace him with someone who can still grow stronger.
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- Location
- Somewhere between the stars
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I kinda wonder if this might be like a dev blind spot. Where the devs play a game and realize most players won't be playing it that way.
So, devs would let their blorbo's die because that's how the game.is designed. They don't realize most players don't want their units to perma die. So by the time you reach chapter 4, you've just gone through the Ballas gauntlet and presumely lost a fair few people!
Which means a ton of these units, would been there to help amend that. Train a new generic blorb from ground up or just train Cid thunder God into a literal God of Death.
It reminds me a lot of how fire emblem, got a mode called classic where once a unit dies, it's dead. Except, most people just end up restarting the game when a unit die, despite often chosing that kind of mode.
This game was released when, way back in 1997(?) Or something right. I don't know when games like fire emblem released but i don't know, how well know would this idea of players preference be know.
Of course, this comes with a caveat. Most these cutscenes start with Mustacio right, so that also means devs expected you to have him in the party. A difference between letting just generic blobo's die but letting story one live?
So, devs would let their blorbo's die because that's how the game.is designed. They don't realize most players don't want their units to perma die. So by the time you reach chapter 4, you've just gone through the Ballas gauntlet and presumely lost a fair few people!
Which means a ton of these units, would been there to help amend that. Train a new generic blorb from ground up or just train Cid thunder God into a literal God of Death.
It reminds me a lot of how fire emblem, got a mode called classic where once a unit dies, it's dead. Except, most people just end up restarting the game when a unit die, despite often chosing that kind of mode.
This game was released when, way back in 1997(?) Or something right. I don't know when games like fire emblem released but i don't know, how well know would this idea of players preference be know.
Of course, this comes with a caveat. Most these cutscenes start with Mustacio right, so that also means devs expected you to have him in the party. A difference between letting just generic blobo's die but letting story one live?
- Location
- Malaysia
The game is quite clear in separating non-human and human characters. Putting a singular, non-upgradable human character in the game implies that the character is actually not human.
He has sharpened his soul to a knife's edge and became the hiltless blade. Dancing on the edge of divinity, he cuts what he hates and what he loves.
He is the Sword Saint.
This Aerith here might be significant as the earliest instance of that common trend of depicting her as the shy gentle princess she very much wasn't in her original game.
cB557
voOOP
Here's my thinking on it. The two characters here are Aerith and Cloud. Cloud's here from falling into the lifestream, the place souls in FFVII go when they die, and by that point in the story Aerith is just dead, and she's here as some fresh incarnation with no memory of FFVII. I think the evidence points to Ivalice pulling double duty as the FFVII afterlife, or another world where your soul goes to reincarnate.
What a terrible prospect. Can you imagine dying, going through the pearly gates, and on the other side is England?
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
cB557
voOOP
I mean hey I said it's an afterlife, I didn't say which one.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
To be fair, the game does actually does this, to a certain extent. Finishing Touch, Cloud's best skill, randomly applies one out of Stop, Petrify, or Death, and doesn't use MA to determine that, it has 100% accuracy and, if an enemy is immune, it removes that result from the selection. As far as neutralizing strong units, it's pretty good.
Blade Beam, meanwhile, also doesn't depends on MA, instead inflicting damage equal to Cloud's missing HP; so, when he's at full HP it's 0, but if you've just resurrected him with a Phoenix Down so he has single-digit HP, it can be powerful. This is the trickiest to use of the three non-MA Limits, but it can have uses. Although better is Climhazzard, which instead hit the enemy for how much HP they've already lost; doesn't work very well on normal unit, but against a Zodiak monster, you have Orlandu or Agrias go first and inflict a ton of damage, and then Cloud's Climhazzard will inflict the same damage when he goes immediately afterwards. That can be an highly effective boss killer against units with high HP.
Of course, all of this is mostly theoretical, since, like the Archer's Aim, Cloud's Limits are panel-locked rather than target-locked, and even these three are pretty slow - most people would agree that landing a Climhazzard is almost impossible, at least without Swiftness/Short Charge equipped, and some of the other abilities, like Cherry Blossom, are impossible to land even with Short Charge, most times.
Since everybody is mentioning the mod changes, LFT naturally also fixes Cloud - he joins at party level, he has Calculator unlocked which means he'll have a lot of JP in the magic classes to start with, he can use Limit with any weapon at all, enabling a few pretty cool combo, and also his class has innate Short Charge - which makes him a great class to bolt other magic abilities on, and means his Limits are actually usable right out of the box. He's a very good character there, although part of that is the changes made to Calculator to make it more viable, since Cloud's specific skillset has extreme synergy with those changes.
Speaking of Calculator changes, the LFT mod reduced its MA and PA some more, but also gave it innate Teleport2 (that's the same as teleport, but without the failure chance that normal teleport has) and innate Non-Charge. It also lets you learn Non-Charge as an ability for 9999 JP. It makes the Calculator a very quirky class, in that they have no power and are slow to take turn, but they have maximum mobility and instant casting - but since they've low PA and MA, they need to rely on either support skills (instant Arise!) or status effect (instant Finishing Touch is cool, and instant Death, Frog and Petrify are fun). It creates a weird unit that is interesting to use, but not that strong compared to normal mages, especially since a number of spells (such as Holy and Death) cannot be cast with Mathskill, reining in the skillset a little bit.
Speaking of Calculator changes, the LFT mod reduced its MA and PA some more, but also gave it innate Teleport2 (that's the same as teleport, but without the failure chance that normal teleport has) and innate Non-Charge. It also lets you learn Non-Charge as an ability for 9999 JP. It makes the Calculator a very quirky class, in that they have no power and are slow to take turn, but they have maximum mobility and instant casting - but since they've low PA and MA, they need to rely on either support skills (instant Arise!) or status effect (instant Finishing Touch is cool, and instant Death, Frog and Petrify are fun). It creates a weird unit that is interesting to use, but not that strong compared to normal mages, especially since a number of spells (such as Holy and Death) cannot be cast with Mathskill, reining in the skillset a little bit.
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daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Bro those weren't the Pearly Gates you went through for that, there is a different direction that makes more sense
Anyway I kind of of wonder if the reason why Cloud sucks mechanically is that the people in charge of programming that were in the "don't want him in the game" clique, so they made him into a character you didn't want to use, as a compromise.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Not even the posh or nice parts of England, but fucking Brighton or Birmingham.
- Pronouns
- She/They
"Please tell me Italo-Frenglish hell is better than this. I'll take the fire and brimstone over this any day."
Alternatively: human hell is weird magical creature heaven, it's very efficient. The Lucavi are actually all here for their eternal rewards and we're fucking up the natural order is what we're doing.
No, no, the other direction is France.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
An older joke of an unknown (to me) origin, but:
Heaven: Police are British, Cooks are French, Lovers are Italian, Mechanics are German, and the Swiss organize everything
Hell: Police are German, Cooks are British, Lovers are Swiss, Mechanics are French, and the Italians organize everything
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Ah, I see Omi failed one of the rites of passage for FFT. A rite that forced myself and other PS1 players to truly git gud.
Temple of Nelveska: get all 4 rare items, no save states.
Temple of Nelveska: get all 4 rare items, no save states.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
That's mostly an exercise in keeping Construct 7 alive, since it takes so many turns to collect everything. You just need to park somebody in front of him who is immortal and keeps chucking potions at his metal head. It's not especially difficult, it's mostly tedious.
Also, it's mostly useless; the Spear is the only item that's really worth the effort. The Sasuke Knife is certainly stronger than any Ninja Sword available at this point in the game (although some might argue that having 1 less WP but adding Don't Act from the currently buyable Spellbinder is worth the exchange), but the two other rare ones, which become available later on, are better, so it'd get obsoleted anyway, and the Nagrarock is a 1 WP joke item sword that is fully useless (25% Frog chance is less than the actual Frog spell), so a waste of time to acquire.
Escutcheon II is a good shield, but I tend to prefer the Venetian Shield as my final shield. The Escutcheon II has 75% physical and 50% magical vs the Venetian's 50% physical and 25% magical, but the difference between 50% and 75% isn't really that high in practice in the end game, when a single physical attack will usually be enough to kill you, and halving Fire, Thunder and Ice like the Venetian Shield does means that the Venetian shield is more consistent - in that, even when spells get past the evade, you get something out of the shield against spells, while with the Escutcheon II is all or nothing. And yes, if you equip Ninja Reflexes/Abadon, the Escutcheon II gives you 100% evade against both, while Venetian only gives you 100% physical and 50% magical... but, as usual, shields don't cover the back, while the elemental resistance does, and if you want 100% magic evade, you're better served giving the unit in question an Aegis Shield, which you can just buy. Even if you're using more than one shield carrying unit, putting in the effort for the Escutcheon II is probably not worth the hassle.
Unless, of course, you're doing it for bragging rights. That's perfectly fine, but not everybody cares about bragging rights.
Edit - for reference, if anybody does wants to go for the bragging rights, the ninja blade is at the very end of the tunnel Construct 7 sits in front of, and the Nagrarock is in the left corner at the back of the map (not the corner panel though, the panel one diagonal off from that), meaning you need to climb the temple or walk your way all around it from the right side to reach that one.
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FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
You have it reversed. The nagarok is in the tunnel and Sasuke's Knife is in the back hills.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Thank you for the correction. Doesn't really affect the rest of my argument though.
For reference, the LFT mod makes both of those better, so I do always collect them all, hence why I got confused on the location. The Sasuke Knife has increased WP to become the best Ninja Blade, and also grants Jump +2 when equipped, which is not something weapons normally do and is thematically funny for Ninja, and the Nagrarock had 100% physical evade and casts Demi2 instead of Frog, meaning it can actually be useful in fights against bosses where normal damage wouldn't really cut it anyway. And the Escutcheon II, renamed to Paladin Shield, grants full elemental immunity (absorbs four elements, nullifies the other four) to earn gamebest status, while Javelin II is upgraded to suck HP and renamed to Blood Lance.
Of course, LFT also turns Nelveska into a superbattle, one of the hardest ones in the game at that, with the hydra updated with the Zodiak flag, crazy speed and Dark Whisper, so getting everything there is an actual challenge - which sort of justifies making all four items worth collecting.
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- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
And now for the next installment of "What became of that Job?", we have a triple feature od Assassins, Dancers and Geomancers.
Assassins are the one Job from FFT that goes from being NPC-exclusive to being a generic one in FFTA/A2. As one of the two "ultimate" Viera Jobs, they're the physical counterpart of the Summoner: an incredibly fast offensive-oriented Job that combines strong status moves with high attack power and a variety of weapons to take down single targets. One of the few Jobs with access to both melee and ranged weapons, they're effective both in a melee role and in a ranged one due to their kit supporting both playstyles, and with s stat growth to match.
Going from an NPC Job to a PC one brought some nerfs to their abilities: they lost the innate Dual Wield, both Shadowbind and Stop Breath picked up a fair MP cost and Shadowbind lost its ragne 4, becoming melee range. In exchange they got a fair few new abilities: Rockseal for instant Petrification (they have 2 instant KO abilites. Yeah, I know), Oblivion for dealing Addle, Nightmare for Sleep (ans sometimes Doom), Aphonia for Silence, Ague for Slow. On top of that they also get to use one of the 5 Ultima variants, Ultima Masher just in case you need to murder someone wearing a Ribbon. Ultima Masher can be used at weapon range, unlike other Assassin ability, and they can equip Greatbows.
The catch is that, for all the Assassin is strong offensively, defensively is quite bad. As most Viera Jobs they're quite frail (very low HP, low defense and middling at best magical resistance), and natively they only get Return Fire as defensive option. Now of course defense isn't needed is the opponents are dead, and Assassins have the speed and power to make sure that any potential threat is dealt quickly.
So what changes there are in A2? Well, for one both offensive stats have lower growth, with Magic bearing most of the nerf (going from second best just below Summoner to medium). While not an Assassin ability, the Concentrate nerf means that now their abilities miss more often, and the changes MP as a whole means that they can't spam their most powerful abilities freely. This leads to a reassesment of what secondaries to use that actually elad to more variety in Assassin playstyles. The Assassin is still a very good Job, but now you do have a reason to use other physical Viera Jobs.
Next we have Dancers. Dancers skip Advance and land directly in A2, as a special Job available uniquely to a certain lategame character. Compared to FFT the Dancer loses cloths as weapons and the ability to target all opponents with dances. It's instead now a short-range Job, using a wide variety of weapons (daggers, staves, poles and rods) to mianly inflict statues and debuffs to opponents in an area. She also gains a more direct offense, with a ranged attack, a life drain and a 2-hit melee ability, though you need a bladed weapon for the last one. The Job as a result is way more straightfoward, and not being locked in dances mean that it can use (or be used as) secondary abilities without issues. Really the main issue with the Job are that the stat growths aren't that good and that the character comes lategame, the abilities by themselves fill a niche that other Jobs usually don't cover (debuffs, less so statuses).
And we end today with Geomancers. Another Job that skips Advance and retuns in A2, Geomancers this time are a Job available uniquely to Grias, a new A2 race. This time they go for a more magical focus rather than the hybrid role in FFT. Geomancy is heavily simplified: there's 4 abilities for each possible weather (sun, rain, mist, snow) and other 4 abilites tied to terrain (natural, artifical, grass, barren). The weather abilities are elemental, while the terrain ones are non-elemental; most abilities also carry a secondary status effect, like in FFT. Geomancy retain its high range, so it's useful as ranged option. Despite being Magic-based Geomancers actually have a medium Magic growth, so you may want to level in Ravager, that has a higher Magic growth. OTOH they do have the best Defense and Resitance growth in the game, so there's that. All in all the Geomancer isn't bad, even if it goes from a balanced option to a more defensive one. It suffers though from competition from other Gria Jobs, that are more offensive-focused and more consistent in their use. Also the fact that unlocking the Geomancer requires 4 quests doesn't help, all the other Jobs that have this requisite require just one.
Assassins are the one Job from FFT that goes from being NPC-exclusive to being a generic one in FFTA/A2. As one of the two "ultimate" Viera Jobs, they're the physical counterpart of the Summoner: an incredibly fast offensive-oriented Job that combines strong status moves with high attack power and a variety of weapons to take down single targets. One of the few Jobs with access to both melee and ranged weapons, they're effective both in a melee role and in a ranged one due to their kit supporting both playstyles, and with s stat growth to match.
Going from an NPC Job to a PC one brought some nerfs to their abilities: they lost the innate Dual Wield, both Shadowbind and Stop Breath picked up a fair MP cost and Shadowbind lost its ragne 4, becoming melee range. In exchange they got a fair few new abilities: Rockseal for instant Petrification (they have 2 instant KO abilites. Yeah, I know), Oblivion for dealing Addle, Nightmare for Sleep (ans sometimes Doom), Aphonia for Silence, Ague for Slow. On top of that they also get to use one of the 5 Ultima variants, Ultima Masher just in case you need to murder someone wearing a Ribbon. Ultima Masher can be used at weapon range, unlike other Assassin ability, and they can equip Greatbows.
The catch is that, for all the Assassin is strong offensively, defensively is quite bad. As most Viera Jobs they're quite frail (very low HP, low defense and middling at best magical resistance), and natively they only get Return Fire as defensive option. Now of course defense isn't needed is the opponents are dead, and Assassins have the speed and power to make sure that any potential threat is dealt quickly.
So what changes there are in A2? Well, for one both offensive stats have lower growth, with Magic bearing most of the nerf (going from second best just below Summoner to medium). While not an Assassin ability, the Concentrate nerf means that now their abilities miss more often, and the changes MP as a whole means that they can't spam their most powerful abilities freely. This leads to a reassesment of what secondaries to use that actually elad to more variety in Assassin playstyles. The Assassin is still a very good Job, but now you do have a reason to use other physical Viera Jobs.
Next we have Dancers. Dancers skip Advance and land directly in A2, as a special Job available uniquely to a certain lategame character. Compared to FFT the Dancer loses cloths as weapons and the ability to target all opponents with dances. It's instead now a short-range Job, using a wide variety of weapons (daggers, staves, poles and rods) to mianly inflict statues and debuffs to opponents in an area. She also gains a more direct offense, with a ranged attack, a life drain and a 2-hit melee ability, though you need a bladed weapon for the last one. The Job as a result is way more straightfoward, and not being locked in dances mean that it can use (or be used as) secondary abilities without issues. Really the main issue with the Job are that the stat growths aren't that good and that the character comes lategame, the abilities by themselves fill a niche that other Jobs usually don't cover (debuffs, less so statuses).
And we end today with Geomancers. Another Job that skips Advance and retuns in A2, Geomancers this time are a Job available uniquely to Grias, a new A2 race. This time they go for a more magical focus rather than the hybrid role in FFT. Geomancy is heavily simplified: there's 4 abilities for each possible weather (sun, rain, mist, snow) and other 4 abilites tied to terrain (natural, artifical, grass, barren). The weather abilities are elemental, while the terrain ones are non-elemental; most abilities also carry a secondary status effect, like in FFT. Geomancy retain its high range, so it's useful as ranged option. Despite being Magic-based Geomancers actually have a medium Magic growth, so you may want to level in Ravager, that has a higher Magic growth. OTOH they do have the best Defense and Resitance growth in the game, so there's that. All in all the Geomancer isn't bad, even if it goes from a balanced option to a more defensive one. It suffers though from competition from other Gria Jobs, that are more offensive-focused and more consistent in their use. Also the fact that unlocking the Geomancer requires 4 quests doesn't help, all the other Jobs that have this requisite require just one.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
Now You Feel Like Number Tactics
Now You Feel Like Number's Going Up