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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I mean, Cid can still die in battle, just like any other unit. He's not even that much harder to kill than a unit with similar HP would be, he just tends to kill things faster than they can kill him back. But if you were to go into a fight against ten opponents with only Cid, winning would actually be pretty hard.
The game just rarely put you in fights with many durable enemies who have long range attacks, so you won't be seeing that unless you go hunting for the chapter 4 rare battles, but a swarm of ten red chocobo could definitely get rid of Cid before he'd killed them all, if they focused fire on him.
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daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
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I think a Calculator that casts, like, "Firaga on every troop on the map standing at the same elevation" is probably a lot closer to a one-man battlefield apocalypse than Cid himself would be.
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View: https://youtube.com/shorts/VsDwVqimQQs?si=wxFCgVlsxbnL4w4x
Black Mage with Calculator skills on the battlefield would be casting power word "scrunch"
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Cid's reputation as Sword Saint actually inflated; junk
Duran's Astrologer skills that cast Stop on everyone else on the map actually the greatest terror in Ivalice
Maybe?
Two Lucavi deleted a castle garrison. Ramza's squad beat up a Lucavi. Cid is much stronger than any member of Ramza's squad bar possibly Agrias With Expensive Makeup.
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Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
I'd like to think the weight of numbers still means something. The Lucavi likely also have an emotional/mental advantage as well, what with being demons of legend, there's probably a part of most people's minds that are gibbering in terror remembering their childhood tales of such things coming for their soul.
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I think "can Belias kill 500 soldiers dispersed through a castle by hunting them down by the handful, stalking the corridors in the middle of the night, cornering groups of five soldiers at a time in guard rooms or the like, over the course of a bloody and horrifying hour" and "can Belias take down five hundred soldiers in formation in an open plain in the middle of the day when they see him coming" are two different questions with two different answers, and the way in which these answers differ is a large part of why the Lucavi are hiding as well-respected church nobility and kill anyone who witnesses their true form.
Entropy Judge
Recurring Bouts of Misanthropy
Or they might be similar answers. Five hundred soldiers, especially if they're - say - unpaid peasant levies who really don't want to be there to begin with might well break and run when the eight-foot tall four-armed goat-headed demon actually gets into sprinting distance. Like, Belias might not kill all of them, depending on how long it takes him to get bored, but that formation is probably going to lose the fight anyway.
Similarly, if a formation of troops gets hit in the front by a charge led by some regular-looking guy who just Swords That Good and carves through them - people are not actually going to press into stabbing range of That Guy, they're going to try and stay alive. That Guy's buddies are going to filter in, the formation is going to lose cohesion and people are going to run. Other formations are going to have their people start running, too, and then they're going to lose the battle because One Guy who was really good at killing things happened to be there.
- Location
- Texas
Yeah, it is very, very, very rare for total annihilation of the opposing force to be the outcome of a military battle, no matter what strategy games show otherwise. Morale breaking is far more common, both on the field and in sieges. So Cidolfus "Murder Blender" Orlandeau could ostensibly defeat a mind boggling number of enemy soldiers in open combat, but likely only kill a fraction of them.
By the time the calculator gets their turn Ivalice would already have machine guns, so it's a moot point.
According to Durai's Papers, certainly.
Honestly, for all we joke about Berserk inspirations, Apostles are a good comparison here: they're terrifying killing machines capable of grand devastation, but a well-coordinated force using smart tactics can defeat one, and if you're really good and have a slab of metal for a sword, you can solo them (presumably, we'll find out if Ramza's up to snuff in the inevitable Lucavi duel).
I don't want to come off as Lex Luthor-esque here, but something like Exalted or standard superhero comics are really only a fun power fantasy for well, the people with Power. For Joe Average and Sally Normal, the conceit that your existence hinges on the goodwill of some supremely powerful but unaccountable person who still likely clings to fallible human traits makes it more akin to an existential horror story.
My forever beloved Warhammer Fantasy, where the answer to "how do you stop a Demon Invasion/Undead Uprising/etc. is "massed artillery, pike formations, and state-sponsored wizardry".
It's really interesting to me that the Lucavi are running such a lean, "low tech" operation. All the corrupt shell games and corrupt politicking is mostly just between mortal catspaws, all the Lucavi needed to do was to show up and possess like 3 people with really no other major sort of supernatural meddling. As far as evil demon conspiracies go, that's a fantastic ROI.
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all of the forgoing is why the correct battlefield disposition is ten thousand basic archers
But completely unrelated, I figured I would remind people before the next update goes up:
1. The plot is directing you to chase the Marquis de Limberry.
2. @Omicron has pointed out some strong resemblances between the Marquis and Sephiroth
3. Cloud is in the party
4. One of the Errands yielded the Black Materia as a reward
But completely unrelated, I figured I would remind people before the next update goes up:
1. The plot is directing you to chase the Marquis de Limberry.
2. @Omicron has pointed out some strong resemblances between the Marquis and Sephiroth
3. Cloud is in the party
4. One of the Errands yielded the Black Materia as a reward
- Location
- Spain
I mean... Cid has lifesteal attacks. Like sure ten elite fights would best him, no doubt, but against common soldiers he could make quite a masacre by just outhealing any wounds they may inflict.
Although he would still lose to concentrated fires if he engages too many at the same time, of course.
- Location
- Malaysia
This is actually a coincidence? You can actually do the quest whenever within Chapter 4 but before the endgame battle.
The sequence of events Omicron pick is actually really funny though. A shame Cloud is not battlefield ready to fight Elmdore and his dancer lieutenants.
Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
This is kind of a trip to think about. You're on the battlefield when someone decides that they need your life more then you do.
Actually, the implications of cheap and effective magical healing in and of itself is fascinating. In real life the vast majority of battlefield casualties are people who are injured, but here anyone who isn't killed is 100% fine to fight again.
This actually led to the development of many weapons IRL where the goal wasn't to kill as much as it was to injure, such as land mines and poison gas.
What would war look like in a world where you can't bleed your enemies without outright killing them?
This actually led to the development of many weapons IRL where the goal wasn't to kill as much as it was to injure, such as land mines and poison gas.
What would war look like in a world where you can't bleed your enemies without outright killing them?
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It would explain why knights are so rend-happy. A skirmish may not kill anyone for good, but a broken golden shield is never getting put back together so the next fight they'll have to go without.
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It makes things like poison, fire, and certain kinds of explosives much less useful.
Then again status effects do seem to be somewhat niche if also at times effective....
Interestingly basic combat magic is fire/ice/lightning, which even when they don't kill you are fairly disabling. Magic being used as a force multiplier to grind down foes so the fighty bois can stab them?
Well, I mean, Exalted is absolutely aware of it. It's kind of a major theme that if you're a mortal among exalted, you're scenery that bleeds. The First Age sucked because Solars became tyrant kings getting up to shit like inviting a bunch of brain-eating chaos fairies into the world to test a cool new weapon or just cutting the middleman and building a garden of limbs themselves. The current age sucks more mundanely with the majority of the world being exploited to satisfy the hungers of Dragonblooded princes, with the dominant religion including tenets justifying their supremacy.
Mortals still accomplish stuff because the world is big, and there aren't that many exalted running around, all told, but the horror of unchecked personal power is very much something the setting is concerned with.
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This is a bit of an unreconstructed 2e take and while some of its DNA is still present in the game line to this day (we're not super interested in telling you "actually it's fine and good that superhuman demigods hold the power of life and death over mortals like you" for obvious reason) it's moved away from it in some way.
An Exalt can kill ten soldiers, a hundred soldiers, a thousand soldiers. But who mined the jade from which their sword is forged? Who grew and harvested the crops that fed them? Who taught them how to wield a sword? Bureaucracy Charms can ensure logistical operations far more robust and efficient than any pre-modern civilization could achieve; but they will not raise the wheat out of the earth or harvest it, they will not move carts under their own power. Craft Charms will make the most beautiful tiara you've ever seen, but they they will not create the cultural value which we imbue into a diamond that makes it desirable; and most of all they will not create the person you seek to seduce or bribe with the offering of that tiara. The Exalted exist in relation to themselves and their society; they exist in relation to mankind. All these teeming masses, that "scenery that bleeds," they are the ones that make the world function, that makes the world meaningful.
Without humanity the Exalted just kill each other until all the living ones starve to death and then the Abyssals sit among the corpses with nothing left to do.
In the modern incarnation of the game, we try to emphasize that no Exalt arises a blank slate, perfectly formed out of a vat (I mean except the Alchemicals whose crowdfunding campaign is happening right now and which you should consider backing but, y'know). They are all deeply shaped by the circumstances of their upbringing and, more generally, the culture and history that surrounded and suffused them. Power doesn't make you instantly decide that human lives are chaff, your culture is meaningless, and the gods are but petty corrupt spirits to bully. The Exalted struggle with their own relationship to power, with what it means for their relationship to their society, their relatives, their dreams and ambitions. All of these are only meaningful because of the human context which they inhabit. The fact that they can kill a lot of people very quickly changes their agency, but it does not erase their connections. The dominant religion of the world exists to justify and uphold the power of the Dragon-Blooded and more specifically the Scarlet Dynasty, but that religion is meaningful because millions of mortals believe in it, strive to uphold its tenets, and they also exist in a relation to these beliefs, integrating them into their world views and finding ways to reconcile them with their own interests and pre-existing beliefs, rather than accepting it as an unquestioned command from above.
Or to put it another way...
A handful of people existing today have the power to unleash nuclear arsenals and annihilate our civilization in the span of hours. Every so often it comes up in the news as something that has a small but real chance of happening due to developing world events. That does make a lot of us feel the pangs of existential horror, sometimes, for a little while.
But mostly life goes on. Humans adjust. And we generally regard the people who hold this power with interest, suspicion, and for many a degree of respect, but not terror or religious awe.
Calamitous Avalanche Silences Laughter: "Got any twos?"
Rending Teeth of the Godless Hekatonkhire: "Go Fish."
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Aw lads, it's shaping up to be another three-parter juggernaut
That probably explains why archers and other ranged units are that much more prevalent in Ivalice, since the most affordable counter to That Guy is just going to have dozens or hundreds of mediocre ranged units pelting their general location in order to inflict enough chip damage to deplete That Guy's entire HP pool in between lifesteals.
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Missile weapons are the purview of cowards and Mustadio.
-signed, El Cid's sword gang
-signed, El Cid's sword gang