Final Fantasy Tactics

[trickey]

Hey, my brother just picked up Final fantasy tactics off the bargain rack at wal-mart. I've never played it before (but i have played almost all other ff games) what is it like?

[CygnusZ]

it's like shining force or bahamut lagoon.

[trickey]

Sweet, shining force is one of the best rpg games of all time imho.

[FrustratedPoet]

/me is jealous because Final Fantasy Tactics was never released in England.

[Jon Miller]

Tactics is very cool

JOn Miller

[SnowFire]

One of my favorite games of all time. I've beaten it 4 times with all sorts of interesting challenges set for myself, so if you have any questions, just ask.

It's a game of tactical combat; generally you control 5 characters, and your enemy has anywhere from 1-12 people against you. The AI is surprisingly decent, and the character building and Job points system is great. On the downside, (and this may have changed slightly in the re-released version) the game was translated by a Japanese guy with an English dictionary and his dog one late night and he ran out of coffee halfway through. Okay, maybe not that bad, but native English speakers definitely did not do this translation for the number of errors in it. Still, some lines come out well.

And oh yes, the plot runs out of gas as the game goes on. Chapter 1 is by far the best plot-wise, and it's somewhat downhill from there. But the game is so much fun, I didn't mind too much (and the plot is still decent by the end).

Anyway, explore it yourself! It is HIGHLY recommended.

[Grumbold]

Final Fantasy VIII tactics:

1. Assess monster vulnerabilities
2. Summon appropriate Guardian Force
3. Wait while long graphic plays
4. Are they dead yet? If No, go to step 2.

[FrustratedPoet]

That's nice Grumbold, but they're not talking about Final Fantasy VIII, they're talking about Final Fantasy Tactics.

That is a pretty accurate description of FF8, though.

[Grumbold]

I thought about starting a new thread, but decided against it

Like you said, if FFT actually got released over here maybe we could assess it to see if it was a better game

[Scouse Gits]

I thought that I had read somewhere on these boards that FFT was a pre-release title for the next Fallout game

SG[1]

[SnowFire]

Grumbold: Incorrect! Yes, if that was true, FF8 would bore me to tears. And I know that lots of people ended up doing that, which I find just silly.

Proper FF8 Tactics:
Always draw off bosses (more GF's!)
Always draw off of everything with a quesiton mark
When you find something new and good, draw lots and lots of it until you have 100 of it. On every character.
Prioritize learning all the different stat-junctions from your GF's.
Use the spell-refine and item-refining abilities, you can occassionaly get nice spells far earlier than you "should" (like refining Tents on Disk 1 to get Curagas, which 100 of junctioned to HP will give you like 4500 HP on disk 1)

It's that simple. Trust me, once you have 100 (ridiculously strong spell here) on most stats- heck, ignore most stats, on Strength, your regular attack will do more damage than a GF attack. Plus, you make regular attacks a lot faster than you can summon GFs. And Speed junction is just unholy, once you get that going, you have almost twice as many super-powerful regular attacks. Still not doing enough? Cast Meltdown on your opponent, knocking their Vitality to 0.

And oh yes, due to the free Revive ability, I generally had Squall walk around in constant near-death so he can limit his enemies continuously. Nothing can stand up to Renzokuken well.

The problem with FF8 is simply that it's not hard enough- if you junction right and use your limits, even bosses will die to you in two attacks. I mean, Seifer on Disc 1- he's supposed to be pathetic, yes, but did you know that on my second playthrough I killed him with one hit? That's right, not even a Renzokuken, just one regular attack. Edea took a Renzokuken.

The only GF worth a darn is Cerberus, because he casts double & triple for free- useful for the Omega Weapon battle, and maybe the last boss.

P.S. I like how Square responded to these criticisms in FF9. They made it so that 4/5 of the time (with the exception of the first time you do a summon), an abbrivieated summon animation occurs showing the last dramatic explosion, but the other time you get to see the whole thing and it'll do more damage than usual. "Ungrateful at the work we did animating these? Fine, we'll make you want to see the long animation! Muahaha!"
And oh yes, FF10 includes the options for abbrievated summons as well, but summons work pretty differently there.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Final Fantasy VIII tactics:

1. Assess monster vulnerabilities
2. Summon appropriate Guardian Force
3. Wait while long graphic plays
4. Are they dead yet? If No, go to step 2.

I never used those strategies

and I kicked ass

(for me it was Squall does limit break, everyone I am attackign dies (Since Squall has 100 Ultima))

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by SnowFire
Grumbold: Incorrect! Yes, if that was true, FF8 would bore me to tears. And I know that lots of people ended up doing that, which I find just silly.

Proper FF8 Tactics:
Always draw off bosses (more GF's!)
Always draw off of everything with a quesiton mark
When you find something new and good, draw lots and lots of it until you have 100 of it. On every character.
Prioritize learning all the different stat-junctions from your GF's.
Use the spell-refine and item-refining abilities, you can occassionaly get nice spells far earlier than you "should" (like refining Tents on Disk 1 to get Curagas, which 100 of junctioned to HP will give you like 4500 HP on disk 1)

It's that simple. Trust me, once you have 100 (ridiculously strong spell here) on most stats- heck, ignore most stats, on Strength, your regular attack will do more damage than a GF attack. Plus, you make regular attacks a lot faster than you can summon GFs. And Speed junction is just unholy, once you get that going, you have almost twice as many super-powerful regular attacks. Still not doing enough? Cast Meltdown on your opponent, knocking their Vitality to 0.

And oh yes, due to the free Revive ability, I generally had Squall walk around in constant near-death so he can limit his enemies continuously. Nothing can stand up to Renzokuken well.

The problem with FF8 is simply that it's not hard enough- if you junction right and use your limits, even bosses will die to you in two attacks. I mean, Seifer on Disc 1- he's supposed to be pathetic, yes, but did you know that on my second playthrough I killed him with one hit? That's right, not even a Renzokuken, just one regular attack. Edea took a Renzokuken.

The only GF worth a darn is Cerberus, because he casts double & triple for free- useful for the Omega Weapon battle, and maybe the last boss.

P.S. I like how Square responded to these criticisms in FF9. They made it so that 4/5 of the time (with the exception of the first time you do a summon), an abbrivieated summon animation occurs showing the last dramatic explosion, but the other time you get to see the whole thing and it'll do more damage than usual. "Ungrateful at the work we did animating these? Fine, we'll make you want to see the long animation! Muahaha!"
And oh yes, FF10 includes the options for abbrievated summons as well, but summons work pretty differently there.

yah

I never used magic, but most of my time spent in fights was spent drawing

usually there was some hassle because I knew that if I attacked, they would be dead

I did the same thing with Squall

and I killed many bosses with one hit also

Jon Miller

[Grumbold]

I forgot that whole draw fiasco. If I wanted to go into a fight and spend fifty rounds not fighting !?!?! I could get much stronger. Yet every interesting fight seemed to be against a monster I needed to draw something else from. How boring was that? So I switched to nuking from orbit as being marginally less tedious than hitting draw a million times with brief pauses to heal anyone who might be suffering.

I just found the whole thing unremittingly repetitive compared to FF7 where you could whack all sorts of cool abilities into your weapon and fire away. If I ever summon up the courage/determination/stupidity to play again I'll try the refine tactic. At least that may speed up the process if I dont need to get 100 cure then 100 cura before finally meeting a monster who draws curaga.

I suspect I have outlived this kind of game. When I was a kid I must have spent hours and hours just pressing the forward, back and jump keys to repetitively loop all the levels of Manic Miner. These days my time is more limited so I want each fight to have at least a sliver of purpose. Standing in front of a giant caterpillar and dancing mushroom (hello Alice what have you been smoking?) trying not to attack until everyone has a full inventory of drawable items exceeds my tolerance level. I'm probably just bitter because I wanted it to be as good as FF7. The graphics were so much better, the plot interesting but it was let down by the gameplay.

[trickey]

Thanks guys, ill go give it a try

[SnowFire]

Grum: Point taken. As much as I like the rest of FF8, I'm not a fan of the battles as much as in pretty much any other battle system in the series since 4j/2. I do agree that having you sit there in a boss battle healing yourself while drawing rare spells does take away the intensity- it's almost like your characters are mocking the boss, saying "Hahaha, we can withstand you indefinitely, so we're going to toy with you awhile until actually unleashing our powers and killing you in two rounds."

The problem is the incredibly schizoprenic battle system difficulty. I've seen posts by people who still had 30 Fires or something similarly pathetic junctioned to Strength on late Disc 2 and they're having serious problems, needing to use GFs all the time. And then there's me, who kills everything he doesn't want to draw from nigh-on-instantly because I know where to get the really good spells fast. In an ideal world, there would be a difficulty setting to let me actually be vaugely challeneged by something other than Omega Weapon, and let other people not have to summon GFs all day.

[Kassiopeia]

I was a bit dumbass myself when playing FFVIII the first time; by Disc 2 I had Firaga, sure, but only one or two of it per persona. I never thought the stat boost would increase if there was more magic junctioned.

Draw = Pain. And I'm not talkin about the spell.

And even Omega is easy if you bother to get the Gilgamesh or even Laguna cards.

[Kassiopeia]

Btw, battles go quick if you read something off screen, have the console right next to you with the tv, and just play like a robot, i.e. using a learnt pattern, like driving a car or a bike. The subconsciousness does the drawing, while you browse, say, Apolyton. If you play the PC version or if your PC is in another room this might prove difficult, however.

Edit: Grumbold - you thought the plot of FFVIII was interesting? Well, I guess it's a matter of perspective.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I was a bit dumbass myself when playing FFVIII the first time; by Disc 2 I had Firaga, sure, but only one or two of it per persona. I never thought the stat boost would increase if there was more magic junctioned.

Draw = Pain. And I'm not talkin about the spell.

And even Omega is easy if you bother to get the Gilgamesh or even Laguna cards.

I never used the powers of the cards

that would spoil the collection

Jon Miller

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Edit: Grumbold - you thought the plot of FFVIII was interesting? Well, I guess it's a matter of perspective.

I was trying to be nice. The plot was pretty SeeDy

Compared to other RPG's the Japanese ones do at least manage to hit a certain quality level and bother to include emotional involvement and character flaws. D&D games tend to be just "Evil is going on. Find the source. Kill it. Find it was a front for something else. Kill it. Repeat until end of game." I don't like their prescripting that leaves you with no way to influence the story but I do like their depth.

[SnowFire]

Kass: Sure, I had the Gilgamesh card (not that I would have found it without a little advice from my roommate, though). But beating Omega with Holy Wars is not the point. In a game where all the battles are too easy, why wimp out on the one hard battle?

It's a great, wonderful challenge to beat Omega sans Holy Wars. You have to have mastered the system and play excellently to stand a chance.

Also, the differentness of FF8's plot was, as Grumbold pointed out, quite a strength. The characterization in particular helped carry things through when the main plot wobbled a bit, most notably of Squall.

[CapitanGarlic]

If you like FFT, then you'll definately like the Tactics Ogre games (made by the same folks). I have the GBA game and it's hella cool.

If I could ever find the SNES rom in english, that would be grand, but it ain't going to happen. DAMN YOU, SONY!

[FlameFlash]

CaptainGarlic... are you looking for the Ogre Battle SNES ROM? (I might be able to help.)

Looking forward to the GBA game too, though kind of waiting for somebody else I know to get the game too, part of the annoying thing about FFT or any of those other types of games is saying to a friend, my army could beat up your army and then not being able to prove it.

[ChaotikVisions]

Yes, FFT is a great game, unless you happen to have a random battle versus 12-15 monks(and get slaughtered). Great if you like strategy. Story is decent, but not great.

I'd also suggest Vandal Hearts 1 and 2 if you like that, about the same as FFT on gameplay and story. But, if you want a really good strategy game like this, you need to try FRONT MISSION 3. I say it all caps, because the game is great. I beat it two different ways, thorougly enjoying it each time. Also the cutscense are great, especially when you actually see 'IT'. The game itself is turn-based strategy like the others but your using mechs equipped with various weapons, you also get skills by random chance and you get better at the weapon your using. Pretty interesting, all in all. It is an RPG as well, though its mostly linear, just with a few different paths you can take.

[SnowFire]

Nah, he's referring to Tactics Ogre, which I do have the ROM of, but I don't speak Japanese.

Because everybody gushed over TO and how it was a hardcore version of FFT crossed with Ogre Battle (both of which are great), I went out on eBay and got it a few years back for 60 or so bucks. What a total waste of money. The GBA version from what I hear cleaned up stuff a lot, but the PSX version has serious, game-crippling problems which I don't feel like listing out in full at the moment. But ugh.

P.S. I agree, FM3 is an excellent game. I beat both scenarios as well.

[FlameFlash]

What platform is that Front Mission 3 published on?

*nods* Ogre Battle and FFT combined... that would be interesting to say the least.

I've heard nothing but good things about the GBA version... I've got to just stop dragging my feet and go and get it.

[Jon Miller]

front mission 3 is a PS game

it is still on my to get list

Jon Miller

[FlameFlash]

I'll certainly have to look into getting it then.

[Jon Miller]

The last time I bought a PS1 game I was down to Front Mission 3 and Chrono Cross. I chose Chrono Cross, I am uncertain if I chose rightly.

Jon Miller

[FlameFlash]

Well, I enjoyed Chrono Cross... bought it when it first came out, was only slightly annoyed when the price dropped, but not very much.

I just wish my wish list wasn't so big at amazon.com...