I don't believe that Zodiac compatibility ever returns in subsequent Final Fantasy games, tho. It's a weird and obscure part of gaming history that remained only in the one game thus far.
Maybe that's why Delita is such a well-beloved king. He saw the Zodiac fighting system, and was like "Well, this seems like a terrible idea, i'm gonna make some military reforms", thus getting rid of the Zodiac system, becoming a hero of Ivalice and beyond
Now none of that is terribly relevant to Tactics itself, but I can see a XIV raid story being able to do something with that idea, especially since it's presented as a piece of Garlean history we're unearthing, and that's the kind of nation where a threat to the national mythology could very well dovetail into some interesting events. Also knowing that a bunch of the battle dialogue in FFT is very stage play-like makes the decision to make the XIV version an actual play is a very cute detail.
I still feel like 'Actually, the real story is that the whole religion was a fake meant to enable demons to take over the world and feed on the bloodshed they used it to cause' would be the sort of thing the Garlean Empire, notable for its core philosophy being fascism by way of r/atheism, would embrace rather than suppress. You're telling me a group that has a core tenet of 'faith in divinity is a crime' is going to get mad that the big dramatic twist is 'and everyone who had faith in this religion was being lied to by malevolent supernatural forces' and seek to suppress the whole thing?
I still feel like 'Actually, the real story is that the whole religion was a fake meant to enable demons to take over the world and feed on the bloodshed they used it to cause' would be the sort of thing the Garlean Empire, notable for its core philosophy being fascism by way of r/atheism, would embrace rather than suppress. You're telling me a group that has a core tenet of 'faith in divinity is a crime' is going to get mad that the big dramatic twist is 'and everyone who had faith in this religion was being lied to by malevolent supernatural forces' and seek to suppress the whole thing?
I mean I was thinking more the angle that the beloved golden hero-king was actually a backstabbing asshole who went on to live his life in misery, while the real hero had his reputation irrevocably tarnished but rode off into the sunset to live free in a faraway land.
Like taking the broad strokes and building off that, y'know? It's how I think the best reference stories are done.
I do like, the idea where Delita did fall for Ovelia. Perhaps he started out doing it all as a ruse in order to manipulate her, but somewhere along the way, he ended up kinda buying into it himself. Finding himself as the victory, now king of the very land itself, and his power seemingly unquestioned.
But, because Delita is Delita, a man that spend so much time manipulating, dealing in treachery and betrayal. It did come back to haunt him. Delita's last lines, is him standing besides the crumbled body of Ovelia, looking to the sky and wonder what happened to Ramza. Those two may have been the only people, besides his dead sister that Delita truly loved, or held some manner of affection to.
Tietra is dead, because in many ways of the manipulative ways of the nobles.
Ovelia is now dead, or will never trust him again, because of the many manipulative ways he's been handling in.
Delita did truly become that which he despised, so very long ago.
Delita won everything he set out to do, but was it an ending that would truly satify him?
This is very much like the ending of the "Last Trial" musical based on the Dragonlance books. Where Raistlin Majere manipulates and uses his brother, his apprentice, the priestess who falls in love with him, everybody around him. He falls in love, too, but unlike the books, tears the love out of his heart to become a god. And he wins, defeating the dark goddess Takhisis and various other gods, claiming godly power ... yet without love he cannot obtain the spark of creation, and the world of Krynn dies.
Delita manipulated everybody around him, it got him the reputation of a saviour of the kingdom and the throne, but his deceptive ways led even Ovelia to distrust him and try to kill him. He let Orran die because the historian was no longer useful, I am not sure if he actually preferred being alone, but that is what that road led to. Except you live because somebody else fought and killed the dark goddess.
The final song of the musical, titled "Lord of Nothing", could explain it better (and the good people of the KrynnSub community have translated the whole musical to English, keeping the rhythm) View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO-3U9Rd8-o
I mean I was thinking more the angle that the beloved golden hero-king was actually a backstabbing asshole who went on to live his life in misery, while the real hero had his reputation irrevocably tarnished but rode off into the sunset to live free in a faraway land.
Like taking the broad strokes and building off that, y'know? It's how I think the best reference stories are done.
That's what makes Return to Ivalice such a bewildering turn, because it slots in the events of Tactics whole hog into 14's world, but the motivations and character of the Tactics cast is unrecognizable.
Should we be discussing 14 stuff here? I know Omicron's played it, but it's stuff may show up later.
Interesting ending. Some decisions were certainly made, though I can't quite say I think they were good decisions. Still it mostly wraps things up.
However, there is one plot point that has been bugging me. One that essentially seems to have fallen by the wayside and been forgotten.
Ovelia's true birth as a commoner.
I kind of thought they'd do something with that. Perhaps not anything major, but at least something. Instead it kind of just is presented, passes, and ignored.
You can try to drag some meaning out of it. Something about how nobility and leadership isn't connected to something as arbitrary as birth, but the story has no interest in examining that idea, meaning any relevance to the narrative is what the reader decides.
I can't help but look at that narrative detail and think it has no value. It added nothing material to the story, is ultimately forgotten by the story, and has no weight in the decisions the characters make in the story.
OF COURSE HE TARGETED MUSTADIO. NOT MY MOST POWERFUL UNIT. NOT MY MOST VULNERABLE UNIT. THERE IS NO MERIT IN KILLING HIM EXCEPT ONE: RELENTLESS BULLYING.
While it's very funny that it happened yet again, all of these incidents really add up and it makes me wonder if something about your Mustadio build painted him as a target for the npc priority. Maybe his combination of item use and ranged attack flagged him as especially dangerous in the early rounds of combat, where his low defense would ensure he'd get rocked and that the player would have to devote extra resources to saving his ass.
For the record, 20+ years ago when I spent an afternoon at a friend's house and he loaded up FFT to pass bit of time while we waited for dinner, this was where we started.
Yes. Right here. This is where my Final Fantasy Tactics story began.
You know, the fact we're still so much in the dark about the Lucavi plan really bothers me, maybe we should try talking this out, really hear their side of the story, see if we can't come to some kind of safe, sane, consensual-
So. That's the ending. I have...a bunch of thoughts. I'm not sure what order to put them in. Part of me wants to wait for the wrapup but also I want to get them out there before I end up sitting on them too long.
First off, FFT's ending is really shaped by the same issue that much of the game has been - namely, the only characters that matter are Ramza and Alma, because no one else can be guaranteed to be alive or in the party by the end. When you have characters as memorable as Agrias and Mustadio and Cidolfus, Reis & Beowulf...and at a stretch, Meliadoul, that's really painful. This is the kind of situation that cries out for a Fallout-style set of ending cards that depend on how much you used a unit and whether they survived, but presuemably the the game was either in too much hurry or the flexibility in programming just wasn't there.
And that's a big deal, because. Well. I have difficulty buying it. A downer ending isn't a bad thing in and of itself - if anything it's the appropriate ending to the kind of story this game was telling. But this ties into the character problem - unless the game is going to specifically detail how Ramza and Alma got out and the rest didn't, I don't buy that the rest of the gang was left behind in the Necrohol. And because of that, I don't buy that six days later, Agrias Mother Fucking Oaks didn't kick in the castle door and forcibly assign herself and her wingwomen back to being Ovelia's bodyguard. I don't buy that Cidolfus Orlandeau, the Thunder God, would meekly accept his purported disgrace and death and depart Ivalice forever.
And I don't think I buy that the church (or its relationship with Ivalice's gentry) is still strong enough that Ramza and/or Delita couldn't bring them to heel. FFT has tried to paint itself as Ramza's forgotten story - that more of Ivalice's conflict and politics were happening just over there, hence the non-appearance of characters like the queen. But we've seen the death of the entire Templar leadership, killed multiple high-ranking church officials and either killed or seen the deaths of many highly-placed Ivalician nobles; even if we assume new guys were to step into their place, who is going to be strong enough to stop Ramza and a small team from appearing at Fantasy Westminster and ganking the Archbishop and installing Gillian the ultimate field medic as the new head of the church?
(Whose first official act is to grab Mustadio by the arm and declare church officials can marry now.)
And then there's the matter of Delita.
I'm not sure FFT quite knows how it feels about Delita. Is he a righteous man out to fix the systemic problems with Ivalice's system of nobles and commoners, or is he a snake who wants personal power and is using that image as a cover?
Kuja said:
-Ivalice and FFT story are patterned after War of the Roses-era England
-evil church
-but holy knight good guy
DELITA HAS BECOME CATHOLIC CONFIRMED SMASH THE PERFIDIOUS ANGLICANS BRO
After the death of his sister, Delita's return to the story is marked by a massive power gain that specifically turns him into a holy knight. That's a choice the developers made, and one Delita uses to carve a path through his foes. It would be one thing if Delita used his lies and deceit and we never actually saw him fight again, but WOTL actually doubles down on letting him smash his foes with an extra scene or two of him protecting Ovelia. I get the impression FFT is at least a little bit in love with Delita. Which makes the final scene of him and Ovelia a bit strange as it seems like Delita has just kind of shrugged off the church's continuing presence in politics and whatever changes he may or may not have made are left unsaid. Who exactly is Delita Heiral is a question that...feels like it ends up going somewhat unanswered.
FFT's ending to strikes me as one of those games whose ending was set in stone long before the full story was finished because it tries to tie off the overall story in a bow and fails in the details.
I think that's all I have to say for now.
EDIT: Fuck, I forgot to mention the bloodline thing. It's kind of not entirely out of nowhere thanks to Alma's whole deal, but it still feels like an asspull or remnant of some earlier draft where the Beoulve family history was more important. As it is, it's kind of a nothing - somewhat ironically, I think it's too atrophied an idea to really annoy me. If FFT really tried to go in on 'no Ramza you are the special' as a plot point it would really be irritating, but a single line is too vague and throwaway to be meaningful.
That's what makes Return to Ivalice such a bewildering turn, because it slots in the events of Tactics whole hog into 14's world, but the motivations and character of the Tactics cast is unrecognizable.
Should we be discussing 14 stuff here? I know Omicron's played it, but it's stuff may show up later.
I can't help but look at that narrative detail and think it has no value. It added nothing material to the story, is ultimately forgotten by the story, and has no weight in the decisions the characters make in the story.
It makes a greater irony with Delita's final end IMO. A useful commoner is radicalized by nobles, plays the nobles, is placed into nobility, only to die at the hands of his equal and opposite; a useful commoner radicalized into fear and hate by Delita's designs towards nobility.
E: It's even funnier if he truly loved her, in a rictus grin sort of way.
Fun fact is Alma can actually learn Ultima from those demons. It's basically pointless but it is funny that the demons can power her up if you play it just right.
In FFT though? We start with class struggles and a civil war, but when the Lucavi appear we don't forget about them. Ramza focuses his attention on the threat of the demons, but between weaving in and out of events of the war, as well as Delita himself continuing to drive political events in the background, it becomes clear that the writers were very much interested in how those events ended, with Delita's end being a very intentional foil to Ramza's own fate.
This is my view as well. Unlike all the previous FF games, the questions asked in chapters 1 and 2 get answered! And not with some magic bullshit, but by a person acting within their world as it exists.
The fact that the lowborn are just as human as the nobility that exploits and uses them is not an optimistic stance.
In the end Delitia probably was a decent ruler fondly remembered for what he actually did, but it's hard to do worse then the 50+ year clusterfuck that was the games set up. If Dycedarg had managed to get the throne, his competent autocracy probably would have been an improvement over the anarchy and civil war of previous years as well.
As far as I can tell/remember, the PSP didn't change anything in the ending except giving a montage to a text dump instead of one of those painting-style backdrops.
Of course, the PSP version does manage to change the context of the very last scene. Before Olivia having a knife doesn't need an explanation? And while I agree the original version treats it's characters-who-join-up pretty terribly, the add-ons with Agrias I rather dislike.
It might be because I'm playing too much FF14, but I'd prefer to leave the characterization of her and her knights more blank to imagine, rather then have such thin, tepid canon forced on us. I've seen lots of different examinations of her character in the context of her story after she joins up, and every single one is a lot more interesting and better written then what the PSP added on. Even the one where she's basically a succubus in human form.
I'm unsurprised that while remaking it they couldn't resist giving more context, but I just wish what we got wasn't... that. The lipstick at least has decent writing, but the knife-giving just raises further questions.
You can try to drag some meaning out of it. Something about how nobility and leadership isn't connected to something as arbitrary as birth, but the story has no interest in examining that idea, meaning any relevance to the narrative is what the reader decides.
Isn't the story arc of Delita already this? He's a simple common-born, but he rises the ranks from a mere (templar?) knight to become one of the greatest kings in Ivalice history.
I think the plot point is to assure the player that yes, nobility is made up and stupid.
Establishing that a princess is really just some commoner, but is treated like a princess because reason is basically laying the foundation for the entire Delita plot. After that he starts pretending to be so-and-so and getting more and more power because he convinces people that he's the right sort of person.
. .. Of course, the game says that, and then Ramza and Alma have some magical bloodline? Getting some real mixed messages. (The popular fanon is that their mothers bloodline is actually the one Ultimca references, no the more prestigious well known Paternal line.)
I still feel like 'Actually, the real story is that the whole religion was a fake meant to enable demons to take over the world and feed on the bloodshed they used it to cause' would be the sort of thing the Garlean Empire, notable for its core philosophy being fascism by way of r/atheism, would embrace rather than suppress. You're telling me a group that has a core tenet of 'faith in divinity is a crime' is going to get mad that the big dramatic twist is 'and everyone who had faith in this religion was being lied to by malevolent supernatural forces' and seek to suppress the whole thing?
You know, as somebody who has never played FFXIV and never will, and therefore has no horse in the race... this seems like an excellent basis for a story-arc? "New information has been revealed that proves the religion we abandoned was actually demons all along!" seems like something heroes might want to check, especially if any of them are religious and suspect that the new story is actually villainous propaganda - maybe an excuse to persecute religious people, I don't know what FFXIV villains get up to. Only the investigation turns out to reveal that no, actually, the news is true. What would a religious hero do next? It seems like a great plot twist to hinge a big adventure on.
After the death of his sister, Delita's return to the story is marked by a massive power gain that specifically turns him into a holy knight. That's a choice the developers made, and one Delita uses to carve a path through his foes. It would be one thing if Delita used his lies and deceit and we never actually saw him fight again, but WOTL actually doubles down on letting him smash his foes with an extra scene or two of him protecting Ovelia. I get the impression FFT is at least a little bit in love with Delita.
To that I'll raise you: FFT actually is not in love with Delita, but WotL is.
Keep in mind what I said about the difference in Delita's big scene with Ovelia - the one where, in the PSX translation, Delita declared himself a devil in it for revenge, instead of a righteous man punishing those who would have hurt others as well as him, placing himself among the oppressed as their representative, punishing arm. Also, all of the new scenes garnishing Delita's image, letting him style on opponents in meaningless fights, were WotL additions.
Then, consider the classes. Much has been made of "Ramza remain a Squire", and whether that is a good or bad thing, and whether it's intentionally thematic or not, but I would present the thesis that the fact "everybody and their dog is a holy/divine knight now", as @Omicron put it, is fully intentional. The holy knights are the sword of the nobility, the symbol of their superiority, the power that no commoner, no generic unit can ever earn for themselves. They are that which Delita says that he abhors, but which he's actually become. Meanwhile, the real hero remains humble, and has no need to gain what's essentially the status symbol of having "made it" as a noble, and stays a simple Squire throughout, rejecting his noble heritage. Of course, then WotL adds Dark Knight in and muddles this.
If you look at things from this point of view, then Delita being a Holy Knight was, for the original game, a forewarning sign of how far he'd already fallen when we first meet him again, something which his scene with Ovelia then confirmed. And, of course, as a wicked man who was in it only for himself and had become the monster who he once swore to destroy, he receives his comeuppance at the hand of a common-born woman who was given the same power he wanted - the one who should have been closest to him in mentality, that should have understood him most, instead turning on him as final condemnation of how far he's fallen.
Obviously, this is just an interpretation. Nobody needs to adhere to it. You don't even have to believe it was intentional from the original development team, but in my opinion, this is what the story wanted to communicate all along. Then WotL came along, and decided that actually, this Delita guy is pretty cool, and worked to shine his figure, change his motivations - they fell for his "tragic antihero" act, and worked to improve it, but since they couldn't really change the core of the story without making the game unrecognizable, you end up with a narrative that seems conflicted about how it feels about Delita, because it's being written by two authors in conflict with each other.
But we've seen the death of the entire Templar leadership, killed multiple high-ranking church officials and either killed or seen the deaths of many highly-placed Ivalician nobles; even if we assume new guys were to step into their place, who is going to be strong enough to stop Ramza and a small team from appearing at Fantasy Westminster and ganking the Archbishop and installing Gillian the ultimate field medic as the new head of the church?
Doing such a thing would most likely start a new round of civil war, so honestly i don't think Ramza would want to do it - It's not like he cares about his reputation, after all.
Keep in mind what I said about the difference in Delita's big scene with Ovelia - the one where, in the PSX translation, Delita declared himself a devil in it for revenge, instead of a righteous man punishing those who would have hurt others as well as him, placing himself among the oppressed as their representative, punishing arm. Also, all of the new scenes garnishing Delita's image, letting him style on opponents in meaningless fights, were WotL additions.
Problem is, I don't entirely buy that either. If Delita were actually just in it for himself and out to revenge himself on those who wronged him and essentially flip the entire gameboard, you'd think his subsequent reign would be an anarchic bloodbath; the kind of king who slaughters and beheads anyone he perceives as wronging him. Instead he's lionized (hah) by history as a dude with an awesome reign. I don't think you write that unless you want your audience to sympathize with the character at least a little bit. WOTL undoubtedly makes it more pronounced, but I think the seeds were already there.
It makes a greater irony with Delita's final end IMO. A useful commoner is radicalized by nobles, plays the nobles, is placed into nobility, only to die at the hands of his equal and opposite; a useful commoner radicalized into fear and hate by Delita's designs towards nobility.
E: It's even funnier if he truly loved her, in a rictus grin sort of way.
See, that's what I mean where the value in the plot point is up to the reader, because this doesn't resonate with me at all. The Ovelia is commonborn plot point fails to stick, in part because the story itself practically doesn't care about it.
And at that, I must ask, why include it at all? It's time taken up that is limited and by its nature precious. Better to spend it on something that actually would further an already introduced plot point.
Like, in the scene it was revealed, did it really factor into Ovelia's decision making? Maybe, but again, that's the reader pulling meaning out of a narrative that shrugged its shoulders. The story would have proceeded in the same direction had it not included it, since, in my subjective opinion, Ovelia's main reasoning for going along with the plans of others was ultimately due to her powerless nature. Something which doesn't require the plot point.
EDIT: Just imagine it. Delita does his whole dramatic speech, because as the entire game thus far has proven, talking is a free action and pauses action timers - and then Ovelia's turn rolls around again and she sits back up, and the next thirty years of marriage are the most awkward and hostile relationship in Ivalice's history.
You know, as somebody who has never played FFXIV and never will, and therefore has no horse in the race... this seems like an excellent basis for a story-arc? "New information has been revealed that proves the religion we abandoned was actually demons all along!" seems like something heroes might want to check, especially if any of them are religious and suspect that the new story is actually villainous propaganda - maybe an excuse to perscute religious people, I don't know what FFXIV villains get up to. Only the investigation turns out to reveal that no, actually, the news is true. What would a religious hero do next? It seems like a great plot twist to hinge a big adventure on.
That's not really how it shakes out, but man I kind of want a story around that actually?
Local evil empire is, in fact, entirely in the right about demonizing the local good guy organization (church encouraged but not required), but also they're still being entirely evil empire about it - what do?
Granted I'm sure there's a story to that effect out there, but not one I can think of off the top of my head.
I like how Ramza is taking an increasingly tired attitude towards our mightiest enemies just running like cowards again and again. Who could blame him? Sure, in actual truth Ramza is not the castle-depopulating mass killing monster that his reputation must suggest by this point, he is the leader of a small group of small unit tactics specialists who often follow after the demons who did most of the massacring, but at this point he's still slain every Lucavi that's come his way in both their human and demonic forms and defeated some of the greatest warriors in the realm - the ones that didn't join his group, that is. Everyone who stood their ground against Ramza's party was defeated and either ran or died. It's hard to imagine that Folmarv/Hashmal would present a significantly greater threat, and to the extent that he might, the fact that he keeps running away isn't exactly setting him up for it.
Point is, eventually the concern and fear the Lucavi might have once evoked in Ramza has given way to frustration at their elusive nature. Our boy is on the hunt, and his prey is getting closer.
"Necrohol" is such a strange word. It sounds like nécropole, which is French for "necropolis," and I wonder if that was the intent; in any case it's a creation of the WotL translation team, a neologism created for the purposes of making it sound a little stranger.
What I want to ask is… Why did Loffrey do this? We didn't know the way to enter the necrohol! If he'd just died without that last spiteful gesture, we would have been stuck outside the entrance. Does he have the Scriptures of Germonique with him, and was he worried that we might enter it on our own after taking them from his corpse? If so that could perhaps have been made clearer. As things stand, Loffrey might have condemned Ramza and his allies to a lonely death in the abyss, unknown to all, but he at least made the job of 'stopping Folmarv' easier by getting us where we wanted to be, just locking the door on the way in. Plus… I mean, presumably, Folmarv and his master the High Seraph are planning on getting out somehow, so it's clearly not impossible to leave; the alternative is that Loffrey accidentally sealed his own allies in the necrohol, which would be a little comical.
I think the answer is simpler. Loffrey doesn't believe we're capable of stopping Folmarv (and Cletienne, if it matters). He continues to underestimate Ramza, and figures by trapping us in the necrohol, he ensures our death at the hands of his master. This may prove his final mistake.
Cletienne is supported by two Ninjas, two Samurai, and two Time Mages. These are (almost) the last human units we will be fighting in this playthrough, with the exception of a single lonely Chemist on the next map; the question of how Cletienne and Folmarv convinced these few remaining loyalists finding themselves in the ruins of an otherworld to keep fighting and not ask questions is an interesting one, though they ultimately inscribe themselves in the same tradition as Indiana Jones henchmen and Tomb Raider goons who manage to reach the bottom of the Forgotten McGuffin Temple and still manage to keep their eyes on their end-of-year bonus instead of the dreadful horrors manifesting around them.
I suppose it's possible that they've been promised demonic power/eternal life similar to the leaders, and are just the last few templars alive so far into sunk cost that they go along with it.
OF COURSE HE TARGETED MUSTADIO. NOT MY MOST POWERFUL UNIT. NOT MY MOST VULNERABLE UNIT. THERE IS NO MERIT IN KILLING HIM EXCEPT ONE: RELENTLESS BULLYING.
I might be too lazy to do it, but I really do hope someone goes back through the LP and makes a Mustadio Death Counter because boy does he get punked often.
Genuinely curious what was going on in the AI's head that it chose this course of action. Did nobody seem like a valid target for magic, would the charge take too long so the AI knew it would get murked? Was Gillian low on HP and it was hoping for a lucky crit kill? Seriously, what possesses the AI to go "bonk"?
Barich: "Truly, it is a joy that we should chance to meet again. I once suffered defeat at your hands, but it will not happen twice. This dead city will be your final resting place!"
Barich? Seriously? Dude, I didn't 'defeat' you. I killed you. You died in front of me.
I suppose the Lucavi brought him back to life, but unlike Argath and Zalbaag, he shows none of the signs we've come to associate with undeath - no ashen skin, no modified abilities, he's just plain ol' Barich, a Machinist. It feels like a weird twist that's just here to add an extra battle because the game realized that it ran out of loyalist Templar Knights for us to fight before the final bosses.
Or at least, his battle is the hardest one in the endgame by far, it's certainly one of the only ones I have any memory of happening. All the previous ones blur together into meh, and the following ones are slightly disappointing.
Hashmal is genuinely just kinda disappointing for your last Lucavi. Remember when Cu was blasting your party's asses, or Wiegraf? Maybe Ramza and the blorbos got too good at fighting demonic nightmare creatures over the course of the game.
Alma: "Wh-where… where am I?" Ramza: "Alma!" Alma: "Ramza? Is it… truly you?"
And there it is. We've won. The Lucavi are all slain, Hashmal is defeated, he has failed to perform the great blood sacrifice that might have awakened the High Seraph, Alma has awakened and is about to be reunited with her brother. Total victory across the board.
Now to take a big sip from my mug of tea and hope nobody has a sudden and incredibly brilliant idea to ruin it all in the next thirty seconds.
Psh, of course not, game's over right here, that last zodiac stone and the big bad final god boss are totally irrelevant until Final Fantasy Tactics 2.
I don't know quite what to make of the gender angle there. Saint Ajora the historical figure has consistently been described as male, including in the Scriptures of Germonique. And the Lucavi have been talking about "our master"... But ever since the start of this scene, Folmarv has been talking about the Angel of Blood as "she."
It's possible the Lucavi are beyond notions of gender and Hashmal is simply switching pronouns based on the gender of the intended vessel of the High Seraph. It's also possible that the High Seraph was always female, but once possessed a male host body in Saint Ajora. Transgender Lucavi, now there's an angle to explore.
Somehow, despite this having never happened previously, Alma split off from the Lucavi possessing her body, resulting in two bodies - Alma on one side, looking like her usual self; and the white-haired Ajora!Alma on the other side, still on her knees.
At first, I thought, that feels like someone on the writing team realized things were headed towards "Ramza has no choice but to kill his own sister to stop Saint Ajora who is using her as a vessel," decided that was too much tragedy for one game, and contrived some separation that doesn't make sense based on how we've established Lucavi operate so Alma could be fine. But on second thought… No, we've actually been told explicitly this would happen: "Then all that remains," Elmdore said much earlier, "is the revival of the master. Once that is done, we will have no need of auracite - nor of these vessels. We will come and go as we please."
Saint Ajora has returned, and by her power, the Lucavi are freed from their prisons of flesh. She needed Alma only to incarnate herself into this world, and now she has no further need of her, and cast her aside.
So. We follow once again in the line of the stereotype associated with Final Fantasy games where an extremely powerful cosmic opponent is introduced at the very last second before her boss battle - and, like in most cases and against the reputation associated with that stereotype, that opponent has in fact been heavily foreshadowed and her appearance makes sense within the narrative.
For all that the "Giant Space Flea from Nowhere" thing gets memed in relation to Final Fantasy, so far it's only happened... what, 2 times maybe? Dark Could in FFIII is an obvious case, Zeromus is a bit sus in FFIV, and you could maybe count Chaos in FFI though that feels more like a case of the game having very little plot in the first place. Otherwise, the final bosses have generally been ones who were hounding you throughout the entire game, or relevant right up until they appear.
Look, I'll be real with you: The endgame of Final Fantasy Tactics turning out to be comically easy feels a lot better than in the mainline games I've played previously. I was expecting a bit more challenge but, to be frank, blowing through the last shreds of the Templar Knight conspiracy and carving every remaining Lucavi like a turkey (with the occasional comedic setback like the Hydras incinerating my best soldiers) is rewarding because it genuinely feels like the work I put into customizing all these characters has resulted in a team of personalized badasses who have grown to truly meet every challenge in their way. We surpassed the Lucavi for good, in definite and build-based fashion around the Elmdore-Zalera fight, and everything since then has been Folmarv and his remaining loyalists scrambling to finish their plan before we could catch up to them and give them their just desserts, with the Dycedarg-Adrammalech ploy a (successful) distraction to buy himself enough time to enact the final steps of his plan.
It's the most mechanically satisfying game since FFV, and unlike V, endgame characters don't devolve into samey Freelancers where everyone is running largely the same set of skills. This feels like my reward for engaging with the game, with only a little bit of a cheat hax OP handout (ahem Tynar Rouge ahem).
So yeah, we kicked Ultima's teeth in, and it felt good.
From my memories, Hashmal and Ultima are bizzarely disappointing for final bosses... and it looks like those memories hold true. The real final battle is the Tiamat Swarm.
Ultima is now classified as "Arch Seraph," and has a much spookier, much more deathly appearance, perhaps closer to her "true" form than the Alma-inspired angelic appearance she (it?) took on moments ago.
Despite Agrias being in its AoE, Dispelja does not appear to be able to remove buffs granted by equipment like Tynar Rouge, either; the spell whiffs on her.
So now we get to just beat on the giant piñata until it explodes into a shower of JP and EXP.
Sadly, the JP and EXP from this loot piñata isn't particularly useful since you're past the point of no return. I mean, unless someone was super close to fully mastering their class, I guess?
No really, we never see anyone again other than Ramza or Alma, and there are some theories about whether or not Orran was just seeing things. It's entirely possible the entire party went down in a blaze of glory taking out a god.
Which being fair, stabbing a god to death on an exploding airship is a pretty metal way to go.
In every Final Fantasy game we've played up to this point, the endgame is defined by the looming weight of the final dungeon. The game's final antagonist awaits us at the heart of a nightmare place, beyond a gauntlet of monsters, many of them usually unique, with names, fearsome designs, and deadly special abilities (no matter how easy the endgame turned out in practice). Moreover, each of these dungeons is filled with random encounters, the highest-level monsters in the game ready to pounce on us every five steps, draining resources (and mental stamina) as we go on. By the time we reach the final boss, we've gone through an exhausting gauntlet of horrible fiends; and even if we kill every single named dark general serving our true foe, the place always remains filled to the brim with enemies ready to ambush us if we try to backtrack or explore more.
The effect is that, even if we reach the final boss and they are alone, the advantage of numbers doesn't feel that great. To defeat Kefka, we must ascend a nightmare tower filled with ancient gods bound into his service, mighty dragons, deadly magitek contraptions, and finally confront a man who has already ascended to godhood. To defeat Sephiroth, we must venture to the very core of the planet, past vast complexes of caverns filled with teeming legions of monsters, Iron Giants, King Behemoths, Jenova's last hideous form, and when we meet him it is as an angel; the ultimate lifeform grown cancerous at the heart of the world, a tumor upon existence itself that must be excised. To defeat Ultimecia, we must wrest the very source of our power from each of the most powerful monsters which she has used to sealed them, exploring her dark castle at the end of time, until we can finally breach into her throne room where the ultimate Wicked Witch awaits us upon the machine with which she stands ready to collapse all of space and time into a singularity. Above all, we always remain in their domain. They are the masters of this dark castle, this interdimensional rift, that Lunar subterrane, their mind and power reaching far and wide.
The lack of a final dungeon grinding away at you, but also offering massive cool endgame rewards for your builds is... pretty noticeable in FFT, yeah. I mean there's the optional dungeon where you can Move-Find some super good gear if you hate yourself, I guess? But not getting to traverse these deep tunnels of the monastery and Necrohol to find six more Excaliburs in treasure chests is a bit disappointing. As is, Ramza just kinda blitzes through the last of the Lucavi forces all in a row, then puts on some sunglasses and leaves, sister in hand.
Oh my god I can't fucking believe this. This is literally the "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing!" meme.
Did Delita even know about the Lucavi!? By all indications no! He never had any idea as to the true power and nature of the auracite! He never saw a demon! He thought himself manipulated by Lord Folmarv but he didn't even know what Folmarv was!
Delita's last actual move was to kill Goltanna and pin it on Cid, which was admittedly pretty shrewd, and then he just sat back and let the rest of the game happen. Completely and blissfully unaware of the battle for the fate of Ivalice unfolding under his feet! He probably heard Ramza had murdered the High Confessor and thought "neat, now I don't have to worry about that anymore" and thought nothing more of it! Folmarv vanished and he doesn't even know why, only that his boss is no longer on his ass so he doesn't have to worry about that either!
That bitch!! He didn't do shit!! We did all the actual work!!
Two chocobos enter, bearing familiar riders. They do not pause; they do not look at the grave, or at Orran; they simply pass through, and Orran hurries after her, calling out their names… But they're already gone. After a moment, Valmafra enters again, probably to ask Orran what's taking him so long, and he turns to her:
Orran: "They're alive. They're both of them alive!"
[Valmafra turns to the way the chocobos left.] Orran: "Thank you, Ramza…"
Ramza is an infamous heretic, who could not ever hope to cleanse his name now that all the Lucavi are dead and no evidence of his true deeds remain. It is, of course, better for him - and for his sister, and for all his followers - to be thought dead. But here, they lingered but briefly, to give… Well. Calling Orran a friend with how short his screen time is seems like a stretch. But still; to give one of the last friendly faces in the game a glimpse of their true fate, before departing for some faraway land where no one will know their faces.
Well hey, at least it potentially explains where Orran got some of his info for his history notes. Even if the game says Ramza was never seen again, there's every chance he tracked down Ramza or some of his blorbos and got some direct accounts of what happened.
Wait what? I'm sorry? They burned him at the stake?
What an incredibly grim and horrible fate to consign a friendly character to off-screen, mid-epilogue, while sweeping hopeful music plays over shots of the peaceful countryside, drinking chocobos and mothers putting laundry up on strings!
Just a little casual stake burning, nothing special.
Reminds me of how there'll be the occasional random tragic ending in Fire Emblem epilogues for some characters, you'll just be reading along and then hit "oh yeah Canas and his wife died in a blizzard a few years later RIP Bozos".
It's strange, isn't it? Even now, we cannot truly know Delita's heart. Whether that bouquet is yet another manipulative gesture to continue to build up Ovelia's trust and make her rely on him as her knight in shining armor, or a first sincere gesture of love, now that the war is over, all his ambitions have been secured, he and Ovelia are wed, and he can, at last, afford to show honesty. Orran gave us his analysis - but of course, Delita's sparing of Valmafra was as much a performance as everything else about him.
Personally, I do think that Delita honestly came to love Ovelia in his own way, she might have genuinely been someone he trusted by this point... but also, he's a trained warrior, so no matter his thoughts or intentions, his immediate reaction to being stabbed was "kill the threat", and Ovelia died to that autopilot. Adds to the tragedy spice a bit.
The dagger which Agrias gifted to Ovelia, her present, so that she might be able to defend herself, used in anger and turned against her. One last tragic irony.
Ovelia falls among the scattered flowers Delita meant to give her. Delita's shoulders slump, he clutches his chest where the knife found him, visibly wounded and exhausted. The dagger clatters to the ground, and he turns away, taking a few slow, lumbering steps away from Ovelia's body.
He falls to his knees. But he finds the strength to look up, and ask to the sky:
Ramza, the blood-soaked heretic, the killer, who has walked out of more empty castles than can be remembered leaving behind nothing but the stench of corpses and the wailing of the wind, his name written off all records but that infamy, is doomed to be forgotten for five hundred years after having become an object of fear and hatred in his lifetime. He, who was in truth the hero who slew the demons manipulating Ivalice from behind the scenes, who saved the kingdom from the return of its false saint, from the Angel of Blood whose coming had once brought down civilization, he gets to walk into the sunset with his sister, to find a new life somewhere else, presumably followed by the friends and allies he made along his journey.
King Delita, the hero in armor of gold, the savior of Ivalice, the commonborn soldier who rose to knighthood and nobility, who married the princess and ushered in an era of peace and prosperity for the kingdom, is written into history as one of the great names of Ivalice, a Knight Devout, anointed by the Church, crowned in honor and glory. He, the manipulator, schemer, assassin, survives everyone he ever knew and had reason to care about. Ramza, his childhood friend, presumed dead on some quest of which Delita kept himself ignorant. Valmafra, allowed to flee into the night to find some other life far away. Orran Durai, whose trust and loyalty he sought to purchase with careful demonstrations, he allowed to die on the Church's stake. All the Knights Templar who had once trusted him are dead, and he had already planned to betray them besides; and now his own wife lies lifeless among the scattered petals of the flowers he'd thought to gift her for her birthday.
Delita will go down in history as a noble, brave and kindly king, perhaps struck by his wife in a bout of madness, but he will always be there, in the ruins of that chapel, clutching his breast where the dagger drew his blood, looking to the stars and asking Ramza if he got all that he wanted, all that he deserved.
Thank you for playing and for doing this LP, Omi! It's been a blast, and I'm glad to see FFT was so enjoyable for you. It felt like especially in comparison to some of the recent FF games, you were having fun right up to the end, and the gameplay didn't become too much of a "OP party created all challenge and fun is gone".
Huh. Yeah, for all that i think so far that final fantasy tactics is amongst my favorite of the covered games, i'm not fully sure i like this ending that much? I dunno, something about the last battle with Ultima just feels kinda awkward or weird. Like it doesn't flow properly, or is very stilted. It doesn't quite pull on me in the same way the previous parts of this has been.
FFT's final battle just seems kinda badly balanced, I think. Not that you can't break most final bosses and final battles in Final Fantasy, but did any of the fights from Hashmal to Ultima's two forms really have that much HP? He mentioned the Dark Dragon and the Extra Dungeon Superboss having somewhere in the range of 2.5-3K health, but these final fights went down way faster. It's also not helped by the fact that Ultima's AI seems... questionable, especially phase 2 deciding to prioritize casting Dispel over casting Ultra Megadeath Ultimaja. The Tiamat Hydras in the previous fight were more of a threat, because they could blast people with 800 elemental damage in one go!
Or I could be completely misinterpreting what you're saying and you mean the plotting. In which case... Omi mentioned it too, but I think the lack of a proper final dungeon is part of it? Ramza basically just swept in and murdered every prominent named enemy character in the space of 4 or 5 successive battles, and of said prominent named characters literally only Hashmal/Folmarv has anything resembling an actual character or plot relevance in the story. Then we get a somewhat downer ending of "Ramza's dead/fugitive, his party is probably dead, Orran is dead, Ovelia is dead, GG Everybody".
When too many people look at the same page at once, the pictures break. It's something to do with hosting them on a google doc. I need to figure out a way to bypass that but it requires a change in my workflow so I've been putting it off, and the problem is usually temporary - it should stabilize shortly, hopefully. I'm very sorry about the inconvenience.
Seems to be just something we have to deal with when really major updates drop, tbh. Enough people show up to read the update all at once, that the thread temporarily hits the rate limit, only took about an hour after posting to be clear for me.
God but I do love FFT. I think one of the big reasons for it comes down to how it handles the introduction of the supernatural - I haven't exactly hidden my distaste for this particular trope in the past, it's one of my least favorite parts of FF as a series, but the way FFT handles it I'm able to appreciate it much more.
I think the core reason is that, most of the time, when the big supernatural villain starts showing up, the games often seem to lose interest in the more mundane stakes set in the opening hours. Like in FF8, the questions of child soldiers and the geopolitics of incredibly powerful mercenary organizations, GF junctioning that risks a users' memories, an expansionist empire trying to topple the balance of power? When Ultimecia appears, all of those kind of... fall by the wayside. In FF7, Shinra and corporate power, the environmental themes? Well now Jenova appears and there's a meteor in the sky, who cares about that. It tends to feel like the writers just weren't interested in the very questions they were asking, and it can make it hard to get invested in the plots they propose.
In FFT though? We start with class struggles and a civil war, but when the Lucavi appear we don't forget about them. Ramza focuses his attention on the threat of the demons, but between weaving in and out of events of the war, as well as Delita himself continuing to drive political events in the background, it becomes clear that the writers were very much interested in how those events ended, with Delita's end being a very intentional foil to Ramza's own fate.
It makes the story feel much more intentional, and while I personally might have been more interested in the events of the civil war having a greater focus, I can't accuse them of forgetting about it at all.
I really do love the story, and I'm glad you were able to cover it in this LP.
I mentioned it before, but one of the complaints I remember from when I first played FFT that for whatever reason I guess I remembered being accurate was "the politics plot falls to the wayside as always for crazy magical demon plot"... and yeah, in retrospect it really isn't true. FFT does a pretty good job of intertwining the two plotlines, even if it does end focusing on the magical demon plot... because the main politics plot is pretty much resolved by that point in the game. Delita is on course for the throne, all his political enemies are dead once Ramza shanks his brother and the High Confessor gets murdered... it works out just fine.
Same. Unlike FFVII, I feel that the tone of Final Fantasy Tactics' ending fits what the game was for its entire runtime: a political drama with no clear solutions and a lot of plotting, backstabbing and situation where lack of communication proved deadly, and where schemers, even successful ones, suffered for their actions in the end. Having an ending that reflects that is appropriate, I feel.
Yeah, I get why Omi's immediate reaction beforehand was "well that was One Of The Endings Of All Time", because FFT's ending does look pretty close to "Rocks Fall Everybody Dies No Happy Endings". Ramza's entire crew may or may not have been exploded on an airship, Orran gets burned at stake, and Ovelia tries to shank Delita resulting in getting shanked herself, basically the entire named cast is dead.
But... it's still a conclusive ending, even if it isn't the happiest one. Could have more details sure, like little epilogues for all the named characters in your party, but it's no FFVII going "IDK 500 year timeskip, humanity might be literally extinct here have some Red XIII running around".
Hashmal is genuinely just kinda disappointing for your last Lucavi. Remember when Cu was blasting your party's asses, or Wiegraf? Maybe Ramza and the blorbos got too good at fighting demonic nightmare creatures over the course of the game.
Honestly just in general FFT's endgame is pretty easy to overpower and start smashing through - there's a reason most balance mods involve making the back third of the game more difficult, on top of any other changes.
But also, getting overpowered and blasting through the last act is on some level part of the fun of a blind playthrough, especially with how difficult the earlier parts of the game were.
Think about how much trouble Weigraf or Cu gave us in the past - now we're busy punking god and the only threat is it dying so hard the floor beneath our feet gives way.
I guess it makes sense for Ovelia to have survived that, because I don't know how else Delita would have remained King.
She is the one who (as far as anyone knows) has royal blood, Delita is just king through marriage.
That's not really how it shakes out, but man I kind of want a story around that actually?
Local evil empire is, in fact, entirely in the right about demonizing the local good guy organization (church encouraged but not required), but also they're still being entirely evil empire about it - what do?
Granted I'm sure there's a story to that effect out there, but not one I can think of off the top of my head.
I mean... the 'heroic' answer is pretty obvious, isn't it? Prioritize whichever one is closer to ending the world, deal with the other in your off hours, when you're supposed to be resting and recovering but of course plot keeps happening to you.
Though, the 'heroic' answer is also obviously going to only work in heroic stories...
