"Wait, Ramza, W-wait! I can make you a, uh…Holy Knight, Fell Knight, Knight Knight, Divine Knight, Onion Knight, (K)Nightblade, Temple Knight, Death Knight, Ark Knight, Rune Knight, Dark Knight… Ah! I can make you, a Blood Knight!
Well, you refused to play LFT, so that's a given.
Gariland, the first battle, before Argath? That'd take an enormous amount of grinding in that one fight alone; I generally use that battle to ensure that all of my units have both Squire 2 and Chemist 2 (so that I can branch into whichever combination of starting class I like from the go), and even that takes a lot of time, more than required to collect all of the crystals from all of the enemies, as well as a lot of wailing on the Chemist.
you can, but why would you
Yes, of course it's possible, but note that I said "usually". "I can" and "I usually do" are, as you correctly pointed out, indicative of two different playstyles. We just have different priorities, I stated my dislike of grinding in the past. Speaking of grinding:
So... LFT changed that one from the vanilla 400 JP cost to 1000 JP; it also changed vanilla 90 JP Phoenix Down to cost 250 JP. On the other hand, the full list of Item commands in LFT comes up at 1740 JP, against the 4040 JP it normally takes to learn all of the items in vanilla. I quite like that change, so, as somebody who apparently considers autopotion necessary to play the game, I'd like to hear your thoughts about it.
Wait, hold up here.
Argath would be proud.
Raise is cheaper in LFT, at 100 JP instead of vanilla's 180; this means you can buy it immediately upon unlocking White Mage, as every character starts with a random amount of JP between 100 and 190 in every class. Raise's casting time matters less in the early game, so it's really not a penalty. Phoenix Down dominates the late game already, having it not dominate the early game too seems fine to me.
As I said, LFT gives Ramza a revival ability in his skillset, and he starts with it already learned, and Raise is much cheaper, so no, Phoenix Down is not the only way to help a character downed in the early game; giving the other revival options (as Revive was also lowered from 500 JP to 250 JP and, more importantly, given a vertical tolerance of 1) some time to prove themselves creates more variety in builds, instead of just slapping Phoenix Down on everybody and calling it a day.
That seems for the better, so you know you won't enjoy it and won't waste time trying. Right? Still, I would love to read a detailed explanation as for why that is - although it's probably better had in the spoiler thread, in case you want to discuss anything the thread hasn't covered yet.
Dycedarg, Zalbaag and Ramza all united for one unprecedented moment as they lower their swords and say "what the HELL?!"
I don't disagree with your take in itself, but I'm curious how you would draw the line between "a straightforward improvement" and "the developers' personal take on how to balance the game"; these two concepts seems very difficult to separate to me.
While it's all obviously at least a little subjective, there are changes one can make to a game that will at any rate be fairly uncontroversial improvements (for an extreme, and recent, example: fixing the mistranslation of the "elder brother" mission objective; for one that's more meaningful if not quite as completely inarguable, introducing QoL features like quicksaving or time acceleration). It's a spectrum but one that LFT is pretty firmly into the personal-judgement end of, from all you've said.
I see the point. I think I'm doing a disservice to the mod by describing the individual changes, anyway; a lot of the minor changes, such as the changes in certain abilities - like those I mentioned about Phoenix Down and Ramza having revival - can seem strange individually but, in my experience, work well in the context of other changes. It's really hard to explain how they all come together to work well without trying it.
Cletienne: If I'm so evil, my God Strike me down where I stand!Gillian, end his entire bloodline.
Imagine being a level multiple of 5 in my girl's perception range. Couldn't be me.
Firaja/Fire 4: "Smouldering flames far below, punish the wicked! Fire4!"
In a shocking twist to all the (remaining) worthies of Ivalice, it turns out Delita Heiral was actually a bastard of House Beoulve all along
