>no time to learn nerd stuff
Prepare to get filtered by the law jannies in Advance, then.
Every FFT game including the original is casual-tier as far as strategy games go. You do not have to be a nerd or even good at strategy games to enjoy them. They're about as entry-level as it gets.
I like the gameplay of tactics but that first one is all about the story. To me, game of thrones is tame compared to what FFT did story wise and if I found out one or the other took heavy inspiration from the other I wouldn’t be surprised. Fft advanced has u throwing snowballs to start, I dropped it immediately.
Too bad. Its story is light and somewhat frivolous (and on top of that it's hard to really get into since the central conflict is murky and a couple of the main characters' motivations are arguably really stupid), but it's told charmingly and the game is beautifully polished in every other respect (except difficulty). It's a really good game.
Yes, but it will get harder eventually. Move on to Final Fantasy Tactics when you feel confident enough with this type of gameplay in general, then tackle Tactics Ogre.
>Yes, but it will get harder eventually.
That's not at all what happened in my runs through it. It becomes more complex as you go, but the more exotic abilities you and your enemies obtain, the easier the game becomes, since you can easily choose to use really good abilities that fit the current situation while the enemy AI will often randomly choose weak abilities or abilities that don't fit the situation.
Yes that was my point went from a very serious class conflict with allegories to Catholicism and its faults w some hardcore murdering and slaughtering of innocents sent against a bleak back ground war of the roses type story into, light and frivolous. If you like it that’s cool, that’s just not what I wanted or expected at all. Also after reading about the judge system, yeah not for me at all.
I really enjoyed the serious story from one and didn’t like what has been accurately described as light and frivolous for the second installment. Has nothing to do w my machismo u absolute raging projecting moron. I just didn’t not want or expect the sequel to a very serious game lore wise to be cute and cuddly. I like those type of games too just not what I wanted from a follow up. Frick off to reddit
Not the anon you are replying to, but I felt the same way as you when a buddy recommended I play FFTA. I hated it right when I saw the snowball shit just like you did.
I played it a few years ago (after a decade of ignoring it) because I just decided to see if it would be good - it was. It's definitely more lighthearted and campy. If you go into it knowing that now, though, and don't let that deter you, I think you will really find you enjoy the game. Give it another shot maybe, anon, at least if you don't have much else to play. It's solid with the gameplay either way, and once you ignore the more child-like story, you will probably really have a blast.
I hear you but i absolutely do not like the judge system. I personally don't like random handicaps in games even if the game is good. A lot of people love it, im not hating on them or the game itself just for the sake of it... but I just cant get over the disappointment in the lore and such. I think if im going for light hearted i'd rather play Dual Hearts over and over. Frick Judges! lol. Maybe one day I'll give it fair shake knowing that its very far removed lore wise but for now, i continue to just seethe.
The laws can only cripple you early game before you build some good powerful characters that have a lot of options to get around them, and in the sequel FFTA2 they even made the laws almost ignorable with weak penalties that don't matter much because of complaints from the first game.
Adding what that other anon said, the law system can benefit you as well. I think a lot of people forget you can use your cards to add laws as well, which will just permanently disable an enemy if it's their weapon or a-ability. Or later when you get damage:race cards, you can just make your team invincible essentially.
6 months ago
Anonymous
Inflicting the berserk status on an enemy while basic weapon attacks are illegal can be fun. Moogles are really good at enraging enemies...
The law system can be gamed to your advantage in certain fights. The second totema fight is rendered a joke by the law that bans charm for example. The fight is literally just a bunch of scattered crystals you have to destroy and their only ability is a fire spell that inflicts charm making it a pain of a fight normally. Wait for a day that bans charm and the crystals skip their turns and do nothing the entire fight while you systematically pick them off 1 by 1.
6 months ago
Anonymous
There are conditions where npcs will break the law. I think reaction abilities trigger a judgement if they use an illegal weapon. They will, however, never receive a red card and be ejected from the match.
I'm getting a hankering to play these again.
6 months ago
Anonymous
I was fighting the 3rd FFTA totema today, and it kept using Fire attacks and getting yellow cards, but nothing changed during the battle (the other smaller red dragon only used physical attacks though)
6 months ago
Anonymous
Bosses aren't affected by the law system. They can can rack up yellow cards all day with no penalty and will never get a red card.
The judge system is really not that big a deal. I think you're making it out to be much more of a problem than it is. It does sound like it'd probably annoy you though. So yeah, maybe don't play this.
Yes, but it will get harder eventually. Move on to Final Fantasy Tactics when you feel confident enough with this type of gameplay in general, then tackle Tactics Ogre.
Yeah but you can die all you want as long as you do it in a place where the law reaches, and anybody can bring you right back with a commonly sold item. And there is a whole race of hot bunnygirls. Just, like, stay in your house when the monsters come.
>there is a whole race of hot bunnygirls
Yuo are a man of culture
Anyway, I'm playing it now and I must say I like this game a lot.
I play it with my pinky on the spacebar, in order to double the speed in VisualBoyAdvance, otherwise all the battle animations would be terribly slow.
This game is an absolute slog. Every few battles, all of which take 15 minutes or more, they want you to go back and replay older maps because they're under attack or something. Eventually you're spending nearly as much time replaying scenarios you want to finish as you are advancing the story. I don't remember the gameplay or story being particularly profound either, just sloppo for crpg on a grid
Having a melee unit be able to unlock a ranged attack at full damage provides so much flexibility in combat, and can really make the difference between a casual win and pyrrhic victory.
You completely missed my point.
The game's strategy is overshadowed by its tedious grindy nature which makes unlocking classes and skills a hugely boring chore.
You can easily cheese both games. I stopped playing FFT after I grinded out unlocking ninja and the teleport on Ramza. I think story missions have a set level, or level cap in FFTA or you can just fill your clan with a ton of low level characters that you don't use.
The law system does require some conscious effort. I had to waste days moving around to get favorable laws/avoid ones that would cripple my small, homogenous party. I've heard that A2 is much more lax.
In A2 you only lose the ability to use Phoenix Down or revival spells for the duration of the battle if you break the law and the laws are fixed for each campaign battle instead of rotating daily, there's also a "good boy reward" item given to you at the end of each battle as an incentive to follow the law but they're rarely worth it
i hated it
i hated the gba psp releases
but i loved & played the absolute shit out of the original ps1 release
make of this what you will
i suggest playing that first
The class and skill grind on the PS1 game is a boring slog and slows the game to a crawl hard.
The only thing PS1 tactics has going for it is the story.
GBA Tactics gameplay + PS1 story would be the perfect Tactics game and I'm amazed we still haven't got it.
Tactics Ogre Reborn for me it is then.
This thread is well timed. I just gave the PSP release of Final Fantasy Tactics a try for the first time a couple days ago and was about to drop it, but maybe I can be convinced otherwise. There was a few things I can list that made me turn away, maybe someone can explain whether I'm just not getting something or if these are issues with the PSP version.
The story seems poorly integrated with the gameplay. This Delita dude is chasing after his sister but runs off to the corner of the map because he took a few hits? I didn't get the impression he was supposed to be a coward but his AI sure makes him look like one. Then I have the option to run off for days in the middle of our pursuit. You'd think the bandits would get away or kill her but they were very patient with me fricking around buying equipment in different cities. Completely took me out of the narrative, but that's not a deal breaker for a videogame.
Continuing the missions I noticed that the game gave me new units that were over twice the level of my current units. Then I checked and saw my enemies were even stronger than that. This explains my next issue, which is that the enemies are health sponges that make fighting against them very tedious. Felt like every battle was a matter of getting the positioning right where I could heal my units taking half their health in damage each hit while slowly chipping down the enemy. Seems that making the enemies way higher level was an attempt to increase difficulty instead of clever map/enemy design.
The game also felt really slow. You can be in a very obvious victory state but still need to play a lot more turns to close it out. A common problem in strategy games but the animations take a long time and the enemies take their turns very slow. I quit because if I had to watch each enemy go through their little menu to do a stupid action while taking 5 turns to bring down I was gonna lose it.
Running out of space but you get the idea, is this game just not for me?
Tactics wins out over Advance for several reasons. One, there are simply more abilities and options, which allows more unit customization and potentially a smooth grade of improvements and unlocks. All default characters can learn all abilities, and you don't have to worry about getting a bangaa, numou, moogle, or vera for that specific clan job or to use a specific ability or feature (like the beast tamer or summons). Abilities are gated behind equiped items in FFTA, which means if you never jump through the hoops to expand your clan turf, there are a number of abilities that you will just never acquire. Even then, you might only acquire one of a specific tech teaching weapon or piece of armor, and so must wait and slowly pass it around.
That said, I had a blast running six ninjas in FFTA (secondary jobs being two fighters, two white mages, and two black mages). I'd either equip everyone with two katanas each or give them all an elemental shield, so that I could offensively cast fire/ice spells and if my party member was in the AoE, they'd get healed.
This anon gets it. FFTA was definitely not what I expected after FFT, but it was a solid game that stood on its own merits, brought something new to the table that, while imperfect, still made for an enjoyable game.
FFTA2 was also great, though I didn't play that to completion yet.
FFTA and FFTA2 are both pretty good although the games move pretty slowly. The job system is fun though and theres lots of fun combos for teambuilding.
Storywise FFTA is superior but mechanics and content wise FFTA2 is a lot better.
Worth playing if all you want is a tactical rpg that isn't too hard.
Alright, I picked up FFTA again. I'm going to try to use bangaa and nu mou this time around. I avoided them because of how slow they are. But what even are the good primary jobs for these races?
Bangaa are melee powerhouses and jobs like gladiator(human fighters with spell blades), white monk, and dragoons emphasize this. Nu Mous are the stronger spell casters in the game so black mage and sage are great for them, but also make great white mages, but will be slower than the human or viera white mages. If you're willing to dump a ton of gil, morphers are also very strong.
Going through the ability descriptions, white monk stands out as one of the best set of abilities. There is support and unique attack forms. I favor fighter over paladin because fighters have a few ranged attacks and some AoE's. Hitting harder doesn't tend to matter as much as hitting in the first place.
I was thinking that I'd want to recruit my bangaa as a white monk because they have the best speed, but I might just stick with it because none of the other jobs have standout a-abilities that call to me, based on description alone.
Dragoons are worth looking into since their spear and breath attacks hit multiple units and can even participate in combos from an extra tile away because of the spear. Also great base jump for mountainous maps and the jump skill for a hard hitting ranged 50/50. Normally I start my bangaa as white monk and eventually make him a dragoon for the stat growths after he's gotten some speed from white monk. The abilities and longer attack range are a bonus. The main drawback to them are their poor speed growth and 3 base movement.
Note that white monks can become bishops, who get a stoning spell - which means they can kill almost anything in one turn. That is one of the many instant-win moves the game gives you.
Pretty much every class in this game is super strong, except elementalist. And also white mages usually suck on offense of course. Otherwise, just do whatever and win. Almost every character has the potential to be great. Long-range attacks that don't use MP (like the monk's Air Render) are great. Many status ailments are great. Blinding enemies is surprisingly strong. Instant-win moves are surprisingly common. Give Lamia or Malboro to a morpher and you win against almost everything (and no you don't need to spend money working with the monsters, because status effects don't rely on the user's stats). Bangaa defenders and dragoons are nearly immortal. Nu mou alchemists are gods of death. Everything is super strong, except elementalists and white mages on offense (usually), which are merely regular strong.
Yeah, right. This'll be the fourth time that I run through this game, since it was first released. I always felt like whenever I brought a bangaa, nu mou, or moogle, I was missing out on bringing something better. Last run, I went pure humes. They have the most flexibility and with certain unlocks, are the strongest characters imo. Double sword, steal:ability, and the whole gamut of job archetypes, it just makes sense to only invest in a few highly flexible recruits.
Note that white monks can become bishops, who get a stoning spell - which means they can kill almost anything in one turn. That is one of the many instant-win moves the game gives you.
I never really used status. Between weakening a whole team a little or outright killing an enemy or two, I favored the latter as it has a greater disruption on their action economy. As a party of six humes with double sword, that was a pretty reliable option in first blood.
Several statuses are basically kills though. Blinding an enemy makes it almost useless. Charm makes it worse than useless (for the enemy team), and then you just kill it before it turns back. Frogshape is a guaranteed kill. Petrification is counted by the game as a kill. Berserk on a weak mage may as well be a kill, etc.
I mean yeah, you can just kill things directly too, in dozens of different ways. It seems excessive to be focusing on optimization of a game that's already so easy though, unless you're speedrunning or something. And you get some of those status abilities really early, whereas most of the super-strong attacks come much later.
Also I mean nu mou get the Death spell, plus Flare and Giga Flare... and a morpher with enough monster feeding behind it can probably outdamage absolutely everything else, with area attacks if necessary. I don't know that anything can beat all that. Maybe a doublecasting summoner?
I'm not so much trying to optimize so much as trying to answer the question of, 'how do I make it so I don't regret bringing a bangaa, moogle, or nu mou over another hume?'
I think I'll definitely grab a morpher this time and try that out. Also, gunner for near total map coverage. Bangaa, maybe an unkillable resurrector?
This post baffles me when you can say shit like >Pretty much every class in this game is super strong, except elementalist
and then turn around and praise how good the statuses in this game are. The main drawback is they hit single target mostly, but sometimes thats fine. They hit harder than normal black magics and all have some kind of status attached to them AND arent limited to just the 3 base elements you get from black magic.
Judge and law system is blown completely out of proportion. If you have a variety of units and classes then it's easy to avoid bringing something forbidden, and all it takes is like 2 button presses at the start of a battle to check.
Furthermore this game is unbelievably easy to break later on. Just to mention a few busted skills: Ninja's double wield for humans (combine this with counter abilities like Strikeback or Bonecrusher and you just send in one unit into the enemies and they'll kill themselves by melee attacking you). Red Mage's Doublecast combined with either Elementalist for single target magic + debuffs or Summoner for massive AoEs. Then there's all the Ultima spells which you can use on a ranged unit like Ranger or Gunner and you one-shot most units from across the map.
I prefer the normal 'counter' ability, as it activates more reliably. I haven't actually played and tested this for about four years now, but what I recall is that 'counter' will always activate if someone stands next to you and attacks you. Bonecrusher works *if* you get hit, while strikeback only works if they use a regular hit. So, counter is a more reliable, consistent reaction ability.
That's a great point, I forgot about those distinctions.
Pretty much every class in this game is super strong, except elementalist. And also white mages usually suck on offense of course. Otherwise, just do whatever and win. Almost every character has the potential to be great. Long-range attacks that don't use MP (like the monk's Air Render) are great. Many status ailments are great. Blinding enemies is surprisingly strong. Instant-win moves are surprisingly common. Give Lamia or Malboro to a morpher and you win against almost everything (and no you don't need to spend money working with the monsters, because status effects don't rely on the user's stats). Bangaa defenders and dragoons are nearly immortal. Nu mou alchemists are gods of death. Everything is super strong, except elementalists and white mages on offense (usually), which are merely regular strong.
Respectfully disagree regarding elementalist, and I overlooked them for years. Yeah the single target is less ideal than most other AoE magic spells, but the debuffs are incredible. Specifically my favourite is Fire Whip for the action Disable. If you can render 2-3 units useless early in a battle with Disable it makes the rest of it a cakewalk. I suppose if you really get into the nitty gritty about what's most optimal, the sheer damage output of Summoner, for example, is arguably more efficient than the debuffs of elementalist, but honestly I don't think much of the game (except Brightmoon Tor) is challenging enough to warrant that kind of optimizing.
With all these methods available to break these games, is there a recommended way to play them as if they were actually balanced? I guess I'm asking for challenge runs that otherwise seem intuitive. For example, only doing logical class changes from squire to knight or archer or doing chemist to black or white mage. Looking at a wiki I guess this would limit me from using advanced jobs and I would have to plan tactically once I "promote" someone to the next class. Does this sound sane or will I just end up soft locking myself into a grind?
You should try to optimize your time spent in a fight. It's more fun when your units are capable and take down threats relatively quickly.
At least for FFTA, no unit should be pure support; they all should be capable at killing. Ideally, they'll be able to hit hard both at range and in melee. It sucks having one enemy left and no one is nearby to take it out; the melee fighter nearby has pitiful movement and no ranged attacks and the white mage/thief has nothing meaningful to do
yes
They're similar at best and have a completely different atmosphere. Just git gud.
sorry, no time to learn nerd stuff
then why do you want to play it moron
Every FFT game including the original is casual-tier as far as strategy games go. You do not have to be a nerd or even good at strategy games to enjoy them. They're about as entry-level as it gets.
You get softlocked 15 hours in if you don't grind but you've never played the games so whatever
Than don't play Tactics homosexual
>no time to learn nerd stuff
Prepare to get filtered by the law jannies in Advance, then.
>no time to learn nerd stuff
>plays video-game
Something wrong is not right...
Should've stayed in school so you could get a real job and not spend all your time working and sleeping like a slave.
A real job that lets you play FFTA and get paid for that
Just go watch a marvel movie or something then
I like the gameplay of tactics but that first one is all about the story. To me, game of thrones is tame compared to what FFT did story wise and if I found out one or the other took heavy inspiration from the other I wouldn’t be surprised. Fft advanced has u throwing snowballs to start, I dropped it immediately.
>I dropped it immediately.
Too bad. Its story is light and somewhat frivolous (and on top of that it's hard to really get into since the central conflict is murky and a couple of the main characters' motivations are arguably really stupid), but it's told charmingly and the game is beautifully polished in every other respect (except difficulty). It's a really good game.
>Yes, but it will get harder eventually.
That's not at all what happened in my runs through it. It becomes more complex as you go, but the more exotic abilities you and your enemies obtain, the easier the game becomes, since you can easily choose to use really good abilities that fit the current situation while the enemy AI will often randomly choose weak abilities or abilities that don't fit the situation.
Yes that was my point went from a very serious class conflict with allegories to Catholicism and its faults w some hardcore murdering and slaughtering of innocents sent against a bleak back ground war of the roses type story into, light and frivolous. If you like it that’s cool, that’s just not what I wanted or expected at all. Also after reading about the judge system, yeah not for me at all.
Oh watch out we got a macho badass over here.
Such a mature gamer.
I really enjoyed the serious story from one and didn’t like what has been accurately described as light and frivolous for the second installment. Has nothing to do w my machismo u absolute raging projecting moron. I just didn’t not want or expect the sequel to a very serious game lore wise to be cute and cuddly. I like those type of games too just not what I wanted from a follow up. Frick off to reddit
Not the anon you are replying to, but I felt the same way as you when a buddy recommended I play FFTA. I hated it right when I saw the snowball shit just like you did.
I played it a few years ago (after a decade of ignoring it) because I just decided to see if it would be good - it was. It's definitely more lighthearted and campy. If you go into it knowing that now, though, and don't let that deter you, I think you will really find you enjoy the game. Give it another shot maybe, anon, at least if you don't have much else to play. It's solid with the gameplay either way, and once you ignore the more child-like story, you will probably really have a blast.
I hear you but i absolutely do not like the judge system. I personally don't like random handicaps in games even if the game is good. A lot of people love it, im not hating on them or the game itself just for the sake of it... but I just cant get over the disappointment in the lore and such. I think if im going for light hearted i'd rather play Dual Hearts over and over. Frick Judges! lol. Maybe one day I'll give it fair shake knowing that its very far removed lore wise but for now, i continue to just seethe.
The laws can only cripple you early game before you build some good powerful characters that have a lot of options to get around them, and in the sequel FFTA2 they even made the laws almost ignorable with weak penalties that don't matter much because of complaints from the first game.
Adding what that other anon said, the law system can benefit you as well. I think a lot of people forget you can use your cards to add laws as well, which will just permanently disable an enemy if it's their weapon or a-ability. Or later when you get damage:race cards, you can just make your team invincible essentially.
Inflicting the berserk status on an enemy while basic weapon attacks are illegal can be fun. Moogles are really good at enraging enemies...
The law system can be gamed to your advantage in certain fights. The second totema fight is rendered a joke by the law that bans charm for example. The fight is literally just a bunch of scattered crystals you have to destroy and their only ability is a fire spell that inflicts charm making it a pain of a fight normally. Wait for a day that bans charm and the crystals skip their turns and do nothing the entire fight while you systematically pick them off 1 by 1.
There are conditions where npcs will break the law. I think reaction abilities trigger a judgement if they use an illegal weapon. They will, however, never receive a red card and be ejected from the match.
I'm getting a hankering to play these again.
I was fighting the 3rd FFTA totema today, and it kept using Fire attacks and getting yellow cards, but nothing changed during the battle (the other smaller red dragon only used physical attacks though)
Bosses aren't affected by the law system. They can can rack up yellow cards all day with no penalty and will never get a red card.
The judge system is really not that big a deal. I think you're making it out to be much more of a problem than it is. It does sound like it'd probably annoy you though. So yeah, maybe don't play this.
Yes, but it will get harder eventually. Move on to Final Fantasy Tactics when you feel confident enough with this type of gameplay in general, then tackle Tactics Ogre.
Marth was wrong. I don’t see the problem of getting isekai-ed if the new world is just different.
>*gets turned into a zombie (or worse, a l*zard) because the nerd who got the book didn't like you*
Whoops.
Don't forget the towns that get invaded daily by sentient suicide firebombs. Ivalice is a fricking dogshit place to live
Yeah but you can die all you want as long as you do it in a place where the law reaches, and anybody can bring you right back with a commonly sold item. And there is a whole race of hot bunnygirls. Just, like, stay in your house when the monsters come.
Heck, even some of the monsters are hot.
>there is a whole race of hot bunnygirls
Yuo are a man of culture
Anyway, I'm playing it now and I must say I like this game a lot.
I play it with my pinky on the spacebar, in order to double the speed in VisualBoyAdvance, otherwise all the battle animations would be terribly slow.
>pinky on the spacebar
what?
That's how I nicknamed my pee-pee
eheheheheh
They're two very different games
>I want to take people back to their miserable lives butthole protagonist
This game is an absolute slog. Every few battles, all of which take 15 minutes or more, they want you to go back and replay older maps because they're under attack or something. Eventually you're spending nearly as much time replaying scenarios you want to finish as you are advancing the story. I don't remember the gameplay or story being particularly profound either, just sloppo for crpg on a grid
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that stupid shit. And the ~~*judge*~~ nonsense. Awful frickin' game. Literally FFT for toddlers.
naw i'll stick with the actual good game about slaying demons and toppling the corrupt church
Yeah I love replaying the same random battle over 100 times just to gather enough JP to unlock the ability of throwing rocks, amazing.
Having a melee unit be able to unlock a ranged attack at full damage provides so much flexibility in combat, and can really make the difference between a casual win and pyrrhic victory.
You completely missed my point.
The game's strategy is overshadowed by its tedious grindy nature which makes unlocking classes and skills a hugely boring chore.
Watch out, you may be to macho lmfao
You can easily cheese both games. I stopped playing FFT after I grinded out unlocking ninja and the teleport on Ramza. I think story missions have a set level, or level cap in FFTA or you can just fill your clan with a ton of low level characters that you don't use.
The law system does require some conscious effort. I had to waste days moving around to get favorable laws/avoid ones that would cripple my small, homogenous party. I've heard that A2 is much more lax.
In A2 you only lose the ability to use Phoenix Down or revival spells for the duration of the battle if you break the law and the laws are fixed for each campaign battle instead of rotating daily, there's also a "good boy reward" item given to you at the end of each battle as an incentive to follow the law but they're rarely worth it
If they frick up the localisation in the upcoming remaster, ain't buying.
i hated it
i hated the gba psp releases
but i loved & played the absolute shit out of the original ps1 release
make of this what you will
i suggest playing that first
The class and skill grind on the PS1 game is a boring slog and slows the game to a crawl hard.
The only thing PS1 tactics has going for it is the story.
GBA Tactics gameplay + PS1 story would be the perfect Tactics game and I'm amazed we still haven't got it.
Tactics Ogre Reborn for me it is then.
What do you say about Vandal Heart? Is it good, or is it better to play FFT on PS1?
I already played FFTA
Haven't played it, can't say.
This thread is well timed. I just gave the PSP release of Final Fantasy Tactics a try for the first time a couple days ago and was about to drop it, but maybe I can be convinced otherwise. There was a few things I can list that made me turn away, maybe someone can explain whether I'm just not getting something or if these are issues with the PSP version.
The story seems poorly integrated with the gameplay. This Delita dude is chasing after his sister but runs off to the corner of the map because he took a few hits? I didn't get the impression he was supposed to be a coward but his AI sure makes him look like one. Then I have the option to run off for days in the middle of our pursuit. You'd think the bandits would get away or kill her but they were very patient with me fricking around buying equipment in different cities. Completely took me out of the narrative, but that's not a deal breaker for a videogame.
Continuing the missions I noticed that the game gave me new units that were over twice the level of my current units. Then I checked and saw my enemies were even stronger than that. This explains my next issue, which is that the enemies are health sponges that make fighting against them very tedious. Felt like every battle was a matter of getting the positioning right where I could heal my units taking half their health in damage each hit while slowly chipping down the enemy. Seems that making the enemies way higher level was an attempt to increase difficulty instead of clever map/enemy design.
The game also felt really slow. You can be in a very obvious victory state but still need to play a lot more turns to close it out. A common problem in strategy games but the animations take a long time and the enemies take their turns very slow. I quit because if I had to watch each enemy go through their little menu to do a stupid action while taking 5 turns to bring down I was gonna lose it.
Running out of space but you get the idea, is this game just not for me?
Tactics wins out over Advance for several reasons. One, there are simply more abilities and options, which allows more unit customization and potentially a smooth grade of improvements and unlocks. All default characters can learn all abilities, and you don't have to worry about getting a bangaa, numou, moogle, or vera for that specific clan job or to use a specific ability or feature (like the beast tamer or summons). Abilities are gated behind equiped items in FFTA, which means if you never jump through the hoops to expand your clan turf, there are a number of abilities that you will just never acquire. Even then, you might only acquire one of a specific tech teaching weapon or piece of armor, and so must wait and slowly pass it around.
That said, I had a blast running six ninjas in FFTA (secondary jobs being two fighters, two white mages, and two black mages). I'd either equip everyone with two katanas each or give them all an elemental shield, so that I could offensively cast fire/ice spells and if my party member was in the AoE, they'd get healed.
This anon gets it. FFTA was definitely not what I expected after FFT, but it was a solid game that stood on its own merits, brought something new to the table that, while imperfect, still made for an enjoyable game.
FFTA2 was also great, though I didn't play that to completion yet.
I had many hours in that game, then I touched the cart when saving and I lost everything.
Great game, but I'll be emulating this kind of thing from now on.
FFTA and FFTA2 are both pretty good although the games move pretty slowly. The job system is fun though and theres lots of fun combos for teambuilding.
Storywise FFTA is superior but mechanics and content wise FFTA2 is a lot better.
Worth playing if all you want is a tactical rpg that isn't too hard.
Alright, I picked up FFTA again. I'm going to try to use bangaa and nu mou this time around. I avoided them because of how slow they are. But what even are the good primary jobs for these races?
Bangaa are melee powerhouses and jobs like gladiator(human fighters with spell blades), white monk, and dragoons emphasize this. Nu Mous are the stronger spell casters in the game so black mage and sage are great for them, but also make great white mages, but will be slower than the human or viera white mages. If you're willing to dump a ton of gil, morphers are also very strong.
Going through the ability descriptions, white monk stands out as one of the best set of abilities. There is support and unique attack forms. I favor fighter over paladin because fighters have a few ranged attacks and some AoE's. Hitting harder doesn't tend to matter as much as hitting in the first place.
I was thinking that I'd want to recruit my bangaa as a white monk because they have the best speed, but I might just stick with it because none of the other jobs have standout a-abilities that call to me, based on description alone.
Dragoons are worth looking into since their spear and breath attacks hit multiple units and can even participate in combos from an extra tile away because of the spear. Also great base jump for mountainous maps and the jump skill for a hard hitting ranged 50/50. Normally I start my bangaa as white monk and eventually make him a dragoon for the stat growths after he's gotten some speed from white monk. The abilities and longer attack range are a bonus. The main drawback to them are their poor speed growth and 3 base movement.
Note that white monks can become bishops, who get a stoning spell - which means they can kill almost anything in one turn. That is one of the many instant-win moves the game gives you.
Pretty much every class in this game is super strong, except elementalist. And also white mages usually suck on offense of course. Otherwise, just do whatever and win. Almost every character has the potential to be great. Long-range attacks that don't use MP (like the monk's Air Render) are great. Many status ailments are great. Blinding enemies is surprisingly strong. Instant-win moves are surprisingly common. Give Lamia or Malboro to a morpher and you win against almost everything (and no you don't need to spend money working with the monsters, because status effects don't rely on the user's stats). Bangaa defenders and dragoons are nearly immortal. Nu mou alchemists are gods of death. Everything is super strong, except elementalists and white mages on offense (usually), which are merely regular strong.
Yeah, right. This'll be the fourth time that I run through this game, since it was first released. I always felt like whenever I brought a bangaa, nu mou, or moogle, I was missing out on bringing something better. Last run, I went pure humes. They have the most flexibility and with certain unlocks, are the strongest characters imo. Double sword, steal:ability, and the whole gamut of job archetypes, it just makes sense to only invest in a few highly flexible recruits.
I never really used status. Between weakening a whole team a little or outright killing an enemy or two, I favored the latter as it has a greater disruption on their action economy. As a party of six humes with double sword, that was a pretty reliable option in first blood.
Several statuses are basically kills though. Blinding an enemy makes it almost useless. Charm makes it worse than useless (for the enemy team), and then you just kill it before it turns back. Frogshape is a guaranteed kill. Petrification is counted by the game as a kill. Berserk on a weak mage may as well be a kill, etc.
I mean yeah, you can just kill things directly too, in dozens of different ways. It seems excessive to be focusing on optimization of a game that's already so easy though, unless you're speedrunning or something. And you get some of those status abilities really early, whereas most of the super-strong attacks come much later.
Also I mean nu mou get the Death spell, plus Flare and Giga Flare... and a morpher with enough monster feeding behind it can probably outdamage absolutely everything else, with area attacks if necessary. I don't know that anything can beat all that. Maybe a doublecasting summoner?
I'm not so much trying to optimize so much as trying to answer the question of, 'how do I make it so I don't regret bringing a bangaa, moogle, or nu mou over another hume?'
I think I'll definitely grab a morpher this time and try that out. Also, gunner for near total map coverage. Bangaa, maybe an unkillable resurrector?
This post baffles me when you can say shit like
>Pretty much every class in this game is super strong, except elementalist
and then turn around and praise how good the statuses in this game are. The main drawback is they hit single target mostly, but sometimes thats fine. They hit harder than normal black magics and all have some kind of status attached to them AND arent limited to just the 3 base elements you get from black magic.
Judge and law system is blown completely out of proportion. If you have a variety of units and classes then it's easy to avoid bringing something forbidden, and all it takes is like 2 button presses at the start of a battle to check.
Furthermore this game is unbelievably easy to break later on. Just to mention a few busted skills: Ninja's double wield for humans (combine this with counter abilities like Strikeback or Bonecrusher and you just send in one unit into the enemies and they'll kill themselves by melee attacking you). Red Mage's Doublecast combined with either Elementalist for single target magic + debuffs or Summoner for massive AoEs. Then there's all the Ultima spells which you can use on a ranged unit like Ranger or Gunner and you one-shot most units from across the map.
I prefer the normal 'counter' ability, as it activates more reliably. I haven't actually played and tested this for about four years now, but what I recall is that 'counter' will always activate if someone stands next to you and attacks you. Bonecrusher works *if* you get hit, while strikeback only works if they use a regular hit. So, counter is a more reliable, consistent reaction ability.
That's a great point, I forgot about those distinctions.
Respectfully disagree regarding elementalist, and I overlooked them for years. Yeah the single target is less ideal than most other AoE magic spells, but the debuffs are incredible. Specifically my favourite is Fire Whip for the action Disable. If you can render 2-3 units useless early in a battle with Disable it makes the rest of it a cakewalk. I suppose if you really get into the nitty gritty about what's most optimal, the sheer damage output of Summoner, for example, is arguably more efficient than the debuffs of elementalist, but honestly I don't think much of the game (except Brightmoon Tor) is challenging enough to warrant that kind of optimizing.
With all these methods available to break these games, is there a recommended way to play them as if they were actually balanced? I guess I'm asking for challenge runs that otherwise seem intuitive. For example, only doing logical class changes from squire to knight or archer or doing chemist to black or white mage. Looking at a wiki I guess this would limit me from using advanced jobs and I would have to plan tactically once I "promote" someone to the next class. Does this sound sane or will I just end up soft locking myself into a grind?
You should try to optimize your time spent in a fight. It's more fun when your units are capable and take down threats relatively quickly.
At least for FFTA, no unit should be pure support; they all should be capable at killing. Ideally, they'll be able to hit hard both at range and in melee. It sucks having one enemy left and no one is nearby to take it out; the melee fighter nearby has pitiful movement and no ranged attacks and the white mage/thief has nothing meaningful to do