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

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Omicron said:
I think I would have to view the full script of the PSX version
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I mean, I can link to it if you like?

I have to still do the translation post for the last segment of the game after all (the Dycedarg-Mullonde-Orbonne stretch; I'll do it tomorrow, unless something comes up) so I could put the link there, if you wanted to give it a look and include any consideration you had about it in your closing post. I think I pointed out all the interesting points of divergence, but it's entirely possible you would see things I dismissed as "not that much of a change" as significant, the same as you saw some of the changes I pointed out as not really being as relevant as I thought they were. I'd certainly be interested to read your unfiltered perspective.

As far as Delita's different characterization though, my interpretation hinges primarily on his big scene with Ovelia at the chapel, the one that is a FMV in War of the Lion. I could just quote those two speeches side by side? That way everybody in the thread can make their own call... although anybody who wanted to do that should just look for the video version, since a lot of nuance gets lost without seeing how the characters are moving, how they interrupt each other or move in the scene.

Anyway, text only, no commentary, here it is.

Delita: So here you are... Everyone was looking for you.

Delita: Something wrong?
Delita: Oh, I shouldn't talk to a Princess in such a way.
Delita: By your leave, your most gracious majesty...
Ovelia: Stop it!!
Ovelia: ...Please stop.

Delita: Sorry....I apologize.

Ovelia: What are you going to do with me? I'm not Ovelia, you know. I'm worth nothing to you. Not even worth leaving alive.

Delita: Yes. You're not Ovelia. We don't know your real name or even if you're a noble or a commoner.

Ovelia: What did my life mean all these years...? Raised as a substitute... Ha, ha...amusing isn't it?
Ovelia: A Princess must live her life quietly in a monastery away from the capital. I'd often wondered why only I had to live like that.
Ovelia: But if my suffering would to keep Ivalice in peace, then I thought I could endure it.
Ovelia: What was all the grief and isolation I suffered for?

Delita: You and I are the same... Miserable people forced to live false lives.
Delita: Always being used by someone...
Delita: Try hard and you'll be rewarded they say. Lies...
Delita: Only those close to the top are rewarded, without trying. It's the way of the world.
Delita: Most people have to act the roles given to them... Then again, most of them haven't even noticed they're even acting.
Delita: No way I'd do that. I won't be used. I'll be the one using people now!
Delita: Those who used me must pay for what they've done!

Ovelia: What will you do?
Delita: Let me guide you, Ovelia. Trust me.
Delita: I'll make a country worthy of you! I'll make your life shine!

Delita: ...Don't cry like that.

Ovelia: Should I trust you?
Delita: I won't betray you. I swear by my dead sister, Teta...... So, please don't cry...

Delita: So here you are. They've been searching high and low for you.

Delita: I do hope this day finds Your Royal Highness in better spirits than those past.
Ovelia: Do not mock me! Please. I could not bear it.
Delita: That was cruel of me. I am sorry.

Ovelia: What do you mean to do with me? I am not Ovelia! There can be no value in holding me. No value even in my living.

Delita: You're right. You are not the Princess Ovelia. We do not even know your rightful name. Whether even you be highborn, or low.

Ovelia: I had often wondered.
Ovelia: Of the royal family, why must I alone be confined to a remote monastery, so far removed from the seat of our Crown?
Ovelia: Even this I thought a burden light enough, if it meant the kingdom would know peace.
Ovelia: I played my part, yet still Ivalice runs red with blood. All this suffering and solitude. For what?

Delita: It has been the same for me. I was given the wardrobe of a nobleman, and so I played the part.
Delita: A puppet, ever dancing for the amusement of patrons unseen.
Delita: This wretched world does not reward endeavor.
Delita: It is the patron and his troupe who are receipt - maggots grown fat on endeavor's course.
Delita: Most men but play the part they're given. Most live and die not knowing they play a part at all.
Delita: But I am past all that now. I am their unwitting puppet no more. No more...
Delita: I will exact from them the price of their gluttonous feast!

Ovelia: And just what is it you plan to do to them?

Delita: I will burn down this kingdom, and from its ashes build for you a new one - a kingdom worthy of you.
Delita: I will show you a world where your light will outshine the sun! A world that will know no darkness.

Delita: And you will have no more need of tears.

Ovelia: Such a world...is it possible?

Delita: I will not fail you in this.
Delita: On Tietra's soul, I swear to you.

Delita: .Dry your tears.
 
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Broken25 said:
Lets see...

Ramza is Berseker

Agrias is Saber

Hester is Assasin

Gillian is Caster

Beowulf is Rider

Ries is Beowulf's noble phantasm

Hadrian is Archer

Hadrian is Hadrian's Noble Phantasm

Mustadio is inexplicably Lancer.
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rip to our boy osric who was there at ziekdan fortress when it all started but got muscled aside for a party spot by agrias and mustadio 😔

imagine being the guy that the forgotten legend forgot about
 
Omicron said:
Honestly I think you could do a lot for Hashmal and Ultima by just remembering that they're up 1 vs 5 and just doubling their Speed so they take twice as many actions. Or triple, frankly. In the endgame Speed is the godstat and the bosses simply don't take enough actions when you have the tools to Haste your entire party at the start of every battle.
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Yeah, at a bare minimum the bosses needed higher speed stats, since by endgame any player with an ounce of tactical thought is going to understand the classic bit of knowledge in games like this that is "Speed Is King" and be tossing Haste around like it's candy. If possible, I guess I'd also recommend going the route of just plain giving them system-breaking abilities the player can't get? Things like multiple reactions so physical attacks get a normal counter, but ranged/magical attacks get some kind of ranged magical counter, maybe the ever classic RPG strat of "boss is outnumbered so they get 2-3 moves per turn instead of 1".

That and an AI that doesn't prioritize removing buffs and doing nothing else. Just... give the boss attacks that ignore some buffs, or strip them as part of the attack??? Dispel Strike can totally be a thing, or call it Barrier Raze or something for a magical attack.
Amidatelion said:
Ramza spent half the time running around doing incoherent Shonen yells, give him Berserker class and madness enhancement.
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Isn't there a servant skill called Innocent Monster or something, for servants who are historically remembered as being evil or monsterous even though they actually weren't? I can 100% see Ramza having that, regardless of class.
Reese said:
To my tastes, though, IX's gameplay is much better
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Ah, but consider: FFIX has the ATB system, thus automatically capping it at a 4 out of 10 in the Gameplay category :V

(Really though from what I remember of FFIX gameplay it's fine, even if I'm more partial to something like FFT)
 
A small detail I like, though lost in translation, is that Alma's name lightly foreshadows what happens to her. In Japanese her name would be written as Aruma, only a little bit off Arutema, or Ultima. I can't rightly think they didn't do that on purpose.
 
Omicron said:
Everyone and their dog gets to be a special knight in this game, except Ramza. But that's fine.
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I've never played the remake, so I didn't know this when I made my previous post, but there actually is a special knight class that Ramza can unlock: Dark Knight. Master the Knight job, master Black Mage, get Dragoon, Samurai, Ninja, and Geomancer to level 8, and land the killing blow on 20 enemies. Fun fact: Gaffgarion's job in the original game was Dark Knight.
 
Omicron said:
The Tiamat Swarm is genuinely the hardest battle in the whole Necrohol sequence. It's still not hard, but it had, like, any degree of challenge at all.

Honestly I think you could do a lot for Hashmal and Ultima by just remembering that they're up 1 vs 5 and just doubling their Speed so they take twice as many actions. Or triple, frankly. In the endgame Speed is the godstat and the bosses simply don't take enough actions when you have the tools to Haste your entire party at the start of every battle.
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Agree. You miss a lot of cool details with Ultima's sprites, like the unique attack animation she has in the first form or the spell animations, just because you usually speedblitz both forms rather easily (and they're both vulnerable to Slow to boot).
Another issue is that , speaking frankly, the attacks that both form have aren't that threatening? Ultima (not Ramza's one)/Divine Ultima are very powerful, but area also the slowest attacks around (Speed 10 and 7, respectively) and even with innate Swiftness it's not hard moving units outside the AoE. Grand Cross is way faster (speed 20 base) and can inflict a lot of statuses at once (Stone, Blind, Confuse, Silence, Berserk, Toad, Poison, Slow, Sleep, each with 25% chance), but it can be voided with the right equipment and healing status isn't very difficult. For the Arch Seraph form there's also Dispelja, Return and Disempower, but each has speed 15 and often these ahve little impact. Ultima's AI also isn't very smart, we've seen this in your battle and I've seen the first form trying to melee my characters to little effect where a Grand Cross would have caused a lot more problems. To wit, in my last playthrough each form got to perform one action before going down, and a melee attack and Dispelja aren't much threatening to a endgame party.
There's mod that try to fix this issue, sometime going too far in the other direction (like 25 Speed Arch Seraph Ultima with instacast spells), but really it's endemic. FFTA and A2 improve on the final boss fight a lot, including strong minions for one (Ultima demons are thematic, but if Ultima minions were 2 Greater Hydras and 2 Red Dragons the battle would go down very differently) and giving strong attacks to the boss for another. Even so FFTA's final boss can be one-shotted with some setup, so it's not perfect.
 
cB557 said:
I don't know what a Noble Phantasm is, is being your own one a thing or is this a joke?
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Noble Phantasms can be basically anything tied to a servant's legend. So, at it's most obvious it's things like "King Arthur had Excalibur", but then there's ones like "Jack the Ripper murdered women on misty nights, so Jack generates mist and can insta-evicerate women who are in said mist at night".

I haven't kept up with Fate in years, but... "My noble phantasm is ME" totally sounds like a thing Fate would do somewhere. Even the OG visual novel had some weird ones like "Heracles has the twelve labors manifest as twelve extra lives so you have to kill him multiple times". Heck, Fate/Zero had an assassin who's something like "I manifest my multiple personality disorder as 100 actual separate assassins".
 
So here's a question: what should Ramza's magic card look like?
I'm pegging him as your typical Abzan that a lot of FFT protagonists seem to fit into.
I'd suggest haste, a tap ability to give another creature haste, and something along the lines of giving him +1/+0 every time he taps.

Maybe an expensive damage ability to represent Ultima.

Also maybe you get to chose from a list of keywords to give him when he hits the battlefield?
 
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thamuzz said:
Also maybe you get to chose from a list of keywords to give him when he hits the battlefield?
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When this creature enters play, choose three keywords to apply to this creature until it leaves play. Should this creature return to play, you may replace the keywords.

Edit: Changed the wording a bit. Trying to make it so that it's three keywords that can be replaced, not continually stacking them. This is kind of representing the ability to change jobs/abilities/equipment between battles.
 
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Thozmp said:
When this creature enters play, choose three keywords to apply to this creature until it leaves play. Should this creature return to play, you may choose three other keywords.
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Amidatelion said:
Cool, I can give Ramza Devoid and stick him in my stupid Eldrazi decks.
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I was thinking something a bit more curated for that exact reason. Ramza should not have native access to Lifelink for example. Because he can't become a dark knight.
 
McFluffles said:
Yeah, at a bare minimum the bosses needed higher speed stats, since by endgame any player with an ounce of tactical thought is going to understand the classic bit of knowledge in games like this that is "Speed Is King" and be tossing Haste around like it's candy. If possible, I guess I'd also recommend going the route of just plain giving them system-breaking abilities the player can't get? Things like multiple reactions so physical attacks get a normal counter, but ranged/magical attacks get some kind of ranged magical counter, maybe the ever classic RPG strat of "boss is outnumbered so they get 2-3 moves per turn instead of 1".
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Yeah it took a long time for game designers in both turn based RPGs and tabletops to really start to grok this but if you want your BBEG to be threatening to a pack of endgame murderhobo's you gotta at least make them able to match the action economy of the party.
 
thamuzz said:
So here's a question: what should Ramza's magic card look like?
I'm pegging him as your typical Abzan that a lot of FFT protagonists seem to fit into.
I'd suggest haste, a tap ability to give another creature haste, and something along the lines of giving him +1/+0 every time he taps.

Maybe an expensive damage ability to represent Ultima.

Also maybe you get to chose from a list of keywords to give him when he hits the battlefield?
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Ramza's Boros, no questions asked. Swift justice, delivered by the swordblow.
 
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