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

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All I know is, on my third playthrough I'm pretty sure I got past half the plot, maybe even 2/3 of it, and the one character I designated as Thief almost all of the time was getting kind of close to mastery. "Most of the plot's worth of battles" is a lot of grinding.

As to job recommendations, all I'm going to say outside of a spoiler is that there are some later jobs with low magic stats that benefit heavily from the high magic stat you get from equipping a mage ability, and Black Mage has by far the highest stat of the first crystal.
 
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Compellor said:
All I know is, on my third playthrough I'm pretty sure I got past half the plot, maybe even 2/3 of it, and the one character I designated as Thief almost all of the time was getting kind of close to mastery. "Most of the plot's worth of battles" is a lot of grinding.
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Yeah unless you go out of your way to grind, it absolutely can take a while to master a class. Now granted this can vary from class to class, Thief in particular is on the higher end, and some classes aren't even worth going for mastery until later because they get a bunch of mediocre passive skills you'll rarely use because like... between something like "have 10% more HP/MP" or "equip sord" and "Have an entire extra skillset/set of spells", what are you generally to choose?

Though again, really depends on the class. Blue Mage is actually a pretty quick dip from the starter set, particularly if you skip out after learning the actual "Blue Magic" command ability because there's nothing really useful after that.
 
Got it, Thief is useful, I'll be using one.

ZerbanDaGreat said:
Yeah, as far as I can tell, every character has a preset statline which is modified by the job they assume - for example, Bartz has a Strength of 28, but if he's a Monk that becomes 50-ish. There's also some sort of endgame fuckery you can do where the Freelancer job's stats are collected from the highest stat modifiers of every job that character has mastered, as a sort of different spin on the idea of Onion Knights becoming gigachads at level 90+.

Also one upside to every character having persistent MP progression - if you switch from a martial class to a caster class in the middle of a dungeon, you aren't just completely fucked!
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That does make me curious considering that stat gains were one of the key ways the previous games guided the growth from two-digit values for HP, MP and damage to multi-thousands by the endgame. If statlines don't increase with levels I'm guessing that'll come from equipment instead?

I love how they sproing around the room in their ropes for this cutscene too. The game is very bouncy and expressive with its sprites in a way FF4 never could be because of how deathly serious it was taking itself most of the time. I feel like in this pre-job section we've already had more comedy than all of 4 put together.
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I didn't catch most of them but I love how the game has these bug-out eyes sprites for the characters that are straight out of a looney toones cartoon. Definitely highly expressive.

Project 501D13R said:
Yeah, that second use of keelhaul was a mistranslation for sure, because keelhauling will most likely kill the victim.
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Nah, the mistake's one me. I used the word off the cuff because I was under the impression it was synonymous with "tossing someone into the brig," because keel/qualle. Faris is just threatening to ransom the princess and having everyone locked up belowdecks but isn't threatening to murder them.

Emy said:
I think the true way to decide jobs for FFV characters is to pick whose sprite you like best for each job you want.
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Actually that sounds extremely valid 🤔

NotYourParents said:
Wing Raptor, just like the Mist Dragon, has a counter stance that Omicron might have missed by just bowling it over; it will close its wings around itself, and any attacks will miss it and be counterattacked by a special move, which I believe is Breath Wings

This goes completely unmentioned by the game, but the boss only has 250 HP and thus can be beaten down before you ever see the phase. As such, this feels like Shitty Mist Dragon as a boss; it's trying to teach you something but can very easily be beaten down before it can actually teach you the thing it's trying to.
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...yeah, no, I genuinely had no idea about that. I just rolled in and stabbed the poor birdy to death within a couple turns. I'm like the Kool-Aid Man of Final Fantasy I guess.

Adloquium said:
Yeah, being the level grinder that I am, I noticed immediately that I could equip Barehanded to my mages, and it gives them alarmingly high melee damage. So in cases where I don't actually want to use magic (ie grinding random critters) but want to be on a mage job anyway, I simply equipped Barehanded (and later Kick, also from MNK), and had a full team of four Black Mages wandering the same few overworld tiles going "I CAST FIST".



So minor trivia on differences between platforms: I've been playing the Pixel Remasters on mobile Android, and there are two modes for controlling the characters: there's the "virtual joystick" mode, which just places a, well, virtual joystick on the touchscreen, which can be toggled between left side or right side, and it lets you control the game in the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions. (In earlier FFs, since diagonals were not yet invented, this is reduced to the four cardinal directions.)

The other control scheme is "tap mode", which works like the standard smartphone game and lets you directly tap menu options, and tap locations for your characters to go. Your characters will auto-path their way to their destination, which means the bits in earlier games where you had to find an out-of-the-way path were trivialized, since the characters will just zip along that path automatically. If they get blocked by a wandering NPC, the game is nice enough to make that NPC move out of their way on the next movement tick.

However, this only works for "seen" paths, ie pathways that are not coded to be "hidden". Which means for "hidden" pathways, the game goes "no valid path found" and the destination is considered inaccessible in tap mode. This is the case even with the "See Hidden Passages" ability, which displays those hidden passages, but since they're still coded as "hidden", the game goes "what are you talking about, there's no pathway there".

So the only way to access those passages is to switch to virtual joystick mode and manually enter the passages. Which are still coded as "hidden" even when you're in them, so if you decide to switch back to tap mode, the characters will refuse to move anywhere, even to the tile directly in front of them.
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As far as jank goes that is extremely funny. I mean it probably would be less so if I had to deal with it, but I don't, so, lmao.
 
Omicron said:
That does make me curious considering that stat gains were one of the key ways the previous games guided the growth from two-digit values for HP, MP and damage to multi-thousands by the endgame. If statlines don't increase with levels I'm guessing that'll come from equipment instead?
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HP and MP increase with level, but the other stats don't. Sometimes you get gear that gives you a bonus, but not that big overall. Likewise, Jobs modify your stats, but don't tend to increase them so much as shift them around.

For stuff that does continue to scale, like attack damage, the game multiplies your level with the stat, and then you get that many hits, a bit like FF1.

So for example: say Bartz has 50 Strength, is level 2, and is using a sword that does 15 damage. The game calculates his damage multiplier by taking Strength times level then dividing (for physical attack) by 128, rounded down to the nearest integer. (50*2)/128 = 0, so he just does the default 1 hit. If he levels up to level 3, then (50*3)/128 = 1, so now he does twice as much damage because he gets a bonus hit.

It doesn't show the number of "hits" like FF1, but you can see the effect when, say, an enemy has defence. If the Bartz above was fighting an enemy with 15 defence, he'd do 0 damage no matter what his level is. Even if he's level 50 and now does 20 "hits", he's just doing 0 damage twenty times.

Also certain knife-like weapons (like Faris's dagger and Lenna's knife) are meant to have their hits scale with both strength and agility, but there's a bug where only 1 bit of the agility modifier is used. If the calculation shows that you should have an odd Agility multiplier, like say 50 agility and level 50 (because (50*50)/128 = 19), then you get a single extra "hit" no matter what that number actually is. If the multiplier is even, then you actually get nothing. So depending on your Agility and Strength, it's possible to go up a level and start doing less damage with knives, because you slipped from an Agility multiplier of 1 or 3 (AKA 1), to a multiplier of 2 or 4 (AKA 0).

It's a weird system.
 
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Omicron said:
That does make me curious considering that stat gains were one of the key ways the previous games guided the growth from two-digit values for HP, MP and damage to multi-thousands by the endgame. If statlines don't increase with levels I'm guessing that'll come from equipment instead?
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Adding to what Warclam said, gear provides some stats, but the interesting thing about it is *which* stats it gives (a Knight might wear a heavy Mithril Armor, ooooooor a light clothie* Ninja Go that provides the same armor rating and also agility), and the special effects they might carry. For example, weapons may apply effects like Silence on hit, or cause increased damage to undead/beasts/dragons/hummies/aevis.

*Gear has _weight_. Which affects your speed as well. The heavier you are, the slower you are.

But your biggest stat increase will always be the job selected, and then equipping a learned passive (which, again, a freelancer automatically equips if a job is mastered).

I rummaged in Gamefaqs and found this in an algorithm doc:

***************
7.1) BASE STATS
***************

These are the base stats of each job. Each character receives specific
bonuses to various stats as well.

Str Agl Vit Mag
Butz +4 +1 +3 +1
Lenna +1 +2 +1 +4
Galuf +3 0 +4 0
Faris +3 +3 +2 +2

Str Agl Vit Mag
Normal/Mimic 24 24 24 24
Knight 47 25 44 10
Monk 50 25 50 1
Thief 25 40 26 18
Dragoon 42 29 39 12
Ninja 39 38 27 14
Samurai 43 26 43 12
Berserker 45 15 49 1
Hunter 40 36 25 19
Mystic Knight 38 38 38 25
White Mage 17 25 24 49
Black Mage 15 24 22 55
Time Mage 19 26 21 48
Summoner 14 23 23 57
Blue Mage 16 25 27 47
Red Mage 32 29 18 32
Mediator 37 25 32 21
Chemist 26 27 30 20
Geomancer 28 26 28 48
Bard 16 32 15 35
Dancer 29 29 14 19

********************************
7.2) ABILITIES THAT MODIFY STATS
********************************

Note that none of these modifiers are applied if it ends up lowering a
character's stat (i.e. Knight with Equip Whip will retain his own Strength
value and not the Mediator's Strength).

WHITE
Magic Power = White Mage Magic Power - 2 * (6 - White Mage Job Level)

BLACK
Magic Power = Black Mage Magic Power - 3 * (6 - Black Mage Job Level)

SUMMON
Magic Power = Summoner Magic Power - 4 * (5 - Summoner Job Level)

DIMEN
Magic Power = Time Mage Magic Power - 2 * (6 - Time Mage Job Level)

BLUE
Magic Power = Blue Mage Magic Power

RED
Magic Power = Red Mage Magic Power - (3 - Red Mage Job Level)
If Red Mage Job Level = 4, Magic Power = Red Mage Magic Power

X-MAGIC
Magic Power = Red Mage Magic Power

MAGIC SWORD
Magic Power = Mystic Knight Magic Power - 2 * (7 - Mystic Knight Job Level)
Strength = Mystic Knight Strength - 2 * (7 - Mystic Knight Job Level)

EQUIP SWORD
Strength = Knight Strength

EQUIP SPEAR
Strength = Dragoon Strength

EQUIP KATANA
Strength = Samurai Strength

EQUIP AXE
Strength = Berserker Strength

EQUIP BOW
Strength = Hunter Strength
Agility = Hunter Agility

EQUIP WHIP
Strength = Mediator Strength
Agility = Mediator Agility

EQUIP HARP
Magic Power = Bard Magic Power
Agility = Bard Agility

BRAWL
Strength = Monk Strength

DBL GRIP
Strength = 37 (applied before Character bonuses)

AGILITY
Agility = Thief Agility

********************************
7.3) EXPERIENCE, HP AND MP TABLE
********************************

This table lists the experience required to reach each level and also gives a
base value for HP and MP for each level. To calculate your actual HP and MP:

HP = (Base HP * (Vitality+32)) / 32
MP = (Base MP * (Magic Power+32)) / 32

Bonuses to Vitality or Magic Power due to equipment are not added.

The location of this table in the ROM and the formula for HP and MP are from
Shingo Endo's site at http://www.yk.rim.or.jp/~s-endo (the website is in
Japanese). Thanks to Zach Keene for translating and bringing this info to my
attention.

LEVEL EXP BASE HP BASE MP
1 0 20 2
2 10 25 5
3 33 30 8
4 74 40 11
5 140 50 14
6 241 60 17
7 389 70 20
8 599 80 23
9 888 90 26
10 1276 100 29
11 1786 120 32
12 2441 140 35
13 3269 160 38
14 4299 180 41
15 5564 200 44
16 7097 220 47
17 8936 240 50
18 11120 260 53
19 13691 280 56
20 16693 300 59
21 20173 320 62
22 24180 340 65
23 28765 360 68
24 33983 380 71
25 39890 400 74
26 46546 420 77
27 54012 440 80
28 62352 460 83
29 71632 480 86
30 81921 500 89
31 93291 530 92
32 105815 560 95
33 119569 590 98
34 134633 620 101
35 151087 650 104
36 169015 690 107
37 188503 730 110
38 209640 770 113
39 232517 810 116
40 257227 850 119
41 283867 900 122
42 312534 950 125
43 343330 1000 128
44 376357 1050 131
45 411722 1100 134
46 449533 1160 137
47 489900 1220 140
48 532937 1280 143
49 578759 1340 146
50 627485 1400 149
51 679235 1460 152
52 734131 1520 155
53 792300 1580 158
54 853869 1640 161
55 918969 1700 164
56 987732 1760 167
57 1060294 1820 170
58 1136793 1880 173
59 1217368 1940 176
60 1302163 2000 179
61 1391323 2050 182
62 1484995 2100 185
63 1583329 2150 188
64 1686478 2200 191
65 1794597 2250 194
66 1907843 2300 197
67 2026376 2350 200
68 2150358 2400 203
69 2279955 2450 206
70 2415333 2500 209
71 2556663 2550 212
72 2704116 2600 215
73 2857867 2650 218
74 3018093 2700 221
75 3184974 2750 224
76 3358692 2800 227
77 3539432 2850 230
78 3727380 2900 233
79 3922726 2950 236
80 4125661 3000 239
81 4336381 3050 242
82 4555081 3100 245
83 4781961 3150 248
84 5017223 3200 251
85 5261071 3250 254
86 5513712 3300 257
87 5775354 3350 260
88 6046210 3400 263
89 6326493 3450 266
90 6616420 3500 269
91 6916210 3550 272
92 7226084 3600 275
93 7546266 3650 278
94 7876982 3700 281
95 8218461 3750 284
96 8570934 3800 287
97 8934635 3850 290
98 9309800 3900 293
99 9696668 3950 296

tl;dr:
-Base stats are roughly determined by: job selected + character bonus + abilities selected
-Some passive abilities modify base stats logically, ie Thief's Agility, or Monk's +10% HP
-Some active abilities include their own modifiers, ie: equiping the Monk's Barehanded changes the character's Strenght to what they'd have as a Monk.
-HP and MP are fixed and grow per character level, and then are modified by selected job/abilities. Bonuses to Vitality or Magic Power from gear are ignored.
 
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So last night on impulse I bought the remaster bundle so I could do a more accurate sideline music commentary.

So the big thing that I'm noticing right off the bat is that the FFV remaster really likes the trumpet sample. It's a saucy mariachi style trumpet (meaning: wide vibrato on sustained notes) which is absolutely wild and I love it. Definitely sells the lighter hearted feel of this game.

Connelly said:
That'll be some time later I think, because there's no entrance tile available to where the ship can take you right now.
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Just follow the coast and park at the first available spot so you can walk back to the entrance. It takes barely any time.
 
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Omicron said:
That does make me curious considering that stat gains were one of the key ways the previous games guided the growth from two-digit values for HP, MP and damage to multi-thousands by the endgame. If statlines don't increase with levels I'm guessing that'll come from equipment instead?
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Equipment is definitely particularly important here, due to the fact that almost everything in final fantasy 5 that modifies damage does so after attack has been reduced by defense. This also applies to magic.

This actually makes elemental weaknesses stupidly more important, incidentally, because the general rule on elemental weakness hitting (there are special abilities that alter it) is that you double your effective attack... and then set the enemy's defense to 0.

So for example Fire, Thunder, and Blizzard all have an attack of 20. Fira, Thundara, and Blizzara all have 50. But if the enemy has 40 or 50 magic defense, you'll do more damage with eg fire hitting a fire weakness than a neutral hit with a -ra level spell, and by a lot.

It is entirely possible to find yourself in the early to mid game facing an enemy you literally cannot hurt with your current party except by hitting an elemental weakness.

But no, as far as I'm aware a big part of how number goes up is just level directly affecting HP, MP, and like, multiplying damage at the end. Yeah, a higher strength character hits harder with the same weapon, but so does a higher level one in a direct way ala Pokemon or whatnot.
 
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Connelly said:
That said, now that I check, Blue Mage is not too painful to master compared to most physical jobs. Red Mage on the other hand...
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It's not the Job Abilities that make it time-consuming, it's the Blue Magic spells themselves, plus sometines the synergy you need to get some of them.

Of course, if you're not running a challenge or something similar you can just get stuff like L5D and use it where appropriate.


Warclam said:
Also certain knife-like weapons (like Faris's dagger and Lenna's knife) are meant to have their hits scale with both strength and agility, but there's a bug where only 1 bit of the agility modifier is used. If the calculation shows that you should have an odd Agility multiplier, like say 50 agility and level 50 (because (50*50)/128 = 19), then you get a single extra "hit" no matter what that number actually is. If the multiplier is even, then you actually get nothing. So depending on your Agility and Strength, it's possible to go up a level and start doing less damage with knives, because you slipped from an Agility multiplier of 1 or 3 (AKA 1), to a multiplier of 2 or 4 (AKA 0).

It's a weird system.
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Somebody pulled out a patch for previous versions fixing this. Knifes suddenly became stupidly powerful. Maaaybe they should've just added a fixed modifier to knives and called it a day for PR, but Squeenix can't do ports/remakes of anything that isn't FFVII without screwing up, it seems.
 
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HolyDragoon said:
Somebody pulled out a patch for previous versions fixing this. Knifes suddenly became stupidly powerful. Maaaybe they should've just added a fixed modifier to knives and called it a day for PR, but Squeenix can't do ports/remakes of anything that isn't FFVII without screwing up, it seems.
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Yeah, I've seen hex-editing ideas like giving full Agility plus half Strength, or adding both together but dividing by 256 instead of 128. It's tricky because Agility doesn't actually get as high as Strength, so making Agility too important becomes a nerf.

And then of course there's That One Weapon that isn't bugged and is accordingly one of the most busted things in the whole game.
 
HolyDragoon said:
It's not the Job Abilities that make it time-consuming, it's the Blue Magic spells themselves, plus sometines the synergy you need to get some of them.
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You could say the same of all types of magic. All spells are locked behind some type of access requirement, usually on tiers. The only difference is that most spells are conveniently available in shops, while for Blue spells you have to actively go to the wilderness and "study" it (by being blasted to the face with it. And sometimes it might involve a friend puppetering the monster to blast you in the face). So it's only natural that being more inconvenient affords you gamebreaking spells.

Still, I meant grinding the APB requisites. The last level of most jobs take about 300 or 400 points. Blue only needs 250 points for its last job level, while Red needs 999.

(Although to be fair, the ability learned from mastering Blue is pretty meh, and you doing mostly so Freelancer can learn blue magic. Mastering Red meanwhile gives you the X-Magic command which is basically Godmode for magic users)
 
Omicron said:
Wait wait wait Dualcast is in this game???

Fuck yeah baby we're finally being fed, RDM gang all the way wooooo
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This is where Dualcasting makes its entry into the series, so yeah, casters OP (as long as you have the MP). In FFV, it's obtainable via mastering the Red Mage class. In FFVI, you need to equip the Gembox/Soul of Thamasa. Not sure about the other ones.
 
Omicron said:
Wait wait wait Dualcast is in this game???
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Sure is! Not sure how it works in other games, but equipping Dualcast lets the PC dualcast any spells they know, even if it's not in Red (or even Black or White). One of the most busted combos is a Time Mage with Dualcast.
 
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I am definitely going to have to get my hurry on with my own playthrough.

Zap Rowsdower said:
On jobs, be sure to try to master as many jobs as you can with each character - as mentioned, the stat boosts carry over to Freelancer so Freelancer gets the highest boost for each stat among mastered jobs, but also Freelancer gets every passive skill applied automatically, which can be quite helpful in some ways - counter, dual wielding, boosted item efficacy, extra HP and MP boosts, etc, without taking up your extra ability slot.
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Regarding this, because only the highest applies, you can focus on just three jobs to make your freelancers thicc with stats even without doing the bonkers thing of mastering every job.

Monk has the highest bonus for both Strength and Stamina, Thief has the highest for Agility, and Black Mage has the second highest for Magic. (The highest isn't available for quite a while, and the difference is small anyways).

In addition Monk has the +30HP% abilities and BLM has +30MP%, along with Thief's great passives.

So, tbh, you're in a great spot mastering just those three jobs on all of your characters.
 
Warclam said:
Sure is! Not sure how it works in other games, but equipping Dualcast lets the PC dualcast any spells they know, even if it's not in Red (or even Black or White). One of the most busted combos is a Time Mage with Dualcast.
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Oh god.

Quicken is basically Dualcast with an additional MP cost. So now you can dualcast Quicken, resulting in quadcasting. Yeah, "broken" doesn't begin to describe it. So a Freelancer with Dualcasting, Time Magic and Black Magic (that combo is possible right?) gets multiple high-end spells in one round, provided they have the MP.
 
Saint_007 said:
Oh god.

Quicken is basically Dualcast with an additional MP cost. So now you can dualcast Quicken, resulting in quadcasting. Yeah, "broken" doesn't begin to describe it. So a Freelancer with Dualcasting, Time Magic and Black Magic (that combo is possible right?) gets multiple high-end spells in one round, provided they have the MP.
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That's three commands, so you need mime for it, I think
 
!Dualcast is a separate command, not integrated within the regular job spell list. This is important for Omi, now that I recall it, since he might be expecting the FFTA implementation inside the RDM spell list instead.
 
McFluffles said:
Technically dualcast/X-magic comes with white and black level 3 attached, but yeah you'll need three slots from mime for higher level spells, or to quad-cast summons or something.

Could also just use comet or meteor from your already equipped time magic though, and FFV Meteor hits 4 times so 16 hits let's gooooooo
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I prefer the Dissidia Classic combo myself - Freelancer with Dual Wield learned, Rapid Fire and Spellblade in your skill slots. Only 8 hits rather than 16 but it's a lot easier to hit cap with each hit - and it doesn't use as much MP either.
 
Warclam said:
Sure is! Not sure how it works in other games, but equipping Dualcast lets the PC dualcast any spells they know, even if it's not in Red (or even Black or White). One of the most busted combos is a Time Mage with Dualcast.
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I don't even use the Quicken most of the time. Dualcast half cost Meteor twice a turn is just fun.
 
Aha, time for my favourite FF game!

...which I've somehow managed to only beat once, during a Four Job Fiesta run. I really do enjoy this game, I swear!

More seriously, this is a game that I have a lot of memories of. In some ways it seems like only yesterday that I was buying a copy of Final Fantasy Anthology just to play it, as questionable as that version's localization was. And then, of course, the GBA version had to come along with an actually good English script and significantly fewer emulation bugs. That cartridge is one of the most treasured games in my collection, really.
 
SirKaid said:
Given that the reward is "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" it's kind of fair.
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That's a funny way to say Quicken.

EDIT, hours later:

Come to think of it, that's a very funny way of saying !Mix

There's a reason why a site that generates class challenges has a FFV run review that can be classed as 'XXX (insert one of the four jobs he got assigned) is bullshit'. That particular thing is what makes that class (and cannoneer as well) bullshit.

Edit2: 'Had' a fun review. Going to check the wayback machine to see if i can rescue it from the void.
 
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