After fourteen years of on-and-off play, I finally beat Final Fantasy Tactics last night

playing it as a "walking around" game changes the grinding considerably btw.
when you turn off the psp, it's like you've paused the game. turning it back on resumes immediately right where you were, so there's no real issue with grabbing five minute play sessions. that innovation alone made this playthrough much more fun than some past grinds.

haha its p sad how happy i am to be talking abt fft!!! i have to exert real willpower to avoid a v long post abt how great the oracle classs is & what the best passive abilities are...

i ended up levelling everybody's chemist all the way early and then always making item the secondary skill so everybody can phoenix down or remedy or whatever
then lifefont for movement and instapotion and then got rid of all potions but xpotions so guys are basically healing full after every hit.
levelled everybody up all the way through black mage, geomancer, monk, most of them through geomancer

u r among like souls lamp, let it out........

please make the big oracle post lamp

also i do think it was one of the best rpg stories of any game of its era imo

― Lamp, Friday, May 13, 2011 1:01 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

story-wise i dont think any RPG has ever hit all the right notes for me like this one did

maybe Deus Ex or the first Fallout - certainly no other JRPG

i remember finding them ok @ controlling the flow of a battle (really one of the most impt things in fft) but tedious to use, mostly. why did you like using them?

i just found it funny that you could basically leave a battle on autopilot thanks to them - there were also a few funny times where i ended up barely scraping through a tough battle because i had a dancer tucked in a corner doing the HP damage dance or the random status dance

this shit right here is my jam forever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGdeHJKicmc

This song is just too beautiful. Makes me think of drizzle gently falling on green fields, while kid-looking humans and magical creatures fight for survival.
tribilyan 1 year ago 26
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Imagine living in the ff tactics world. I would be a no nonsense rogue knight who wants to beat the crap out of the royal families and nobles with badass music
WillC 5 months ago

this is my jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azKaZUfPOJ4

haha lol @ me. the thing about oracles is that they have the best melee stats of the mage classes (iirc?) & their status-altering abilities are probably the most useful @ controlling the flow of battle & at isloating and sidelining enemies so you can stat-boost/jp milk/steal items/learn spells w/e reason you might want to prolong & manipulate an encounter.

also the combo of praise/doubt faith always you to mitigate the low base success rate of your more powerful spells, minor spells like blind & sleep are both long-lasting & effective, most of your powerful equipment can be stolen/obtained from drops early & you have a v useful built-in MP recovery system in both the drain spells & move MP up.

obv a time mage w/ math skill secondary & good spell book can break the game so hard but taking the time to master calculator is boring. in the same way you can build ninja/monk characters that are basically unbeatable but they have a hard time controlling the battle if you want to do anything other than win. oracles are both easy to master & versatile to use making them the best support class & one of the most interesting & fun to use imo

mediator's better b/c the sleep spell is called "Mimic Daravon"

the most obscure of in-geek nerd jokes

never did figure out what the hell an onion knight was.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110109162822/finalfantasy/images/1/1a/FF3-NES-OnionKnight.PNG

thought for just a sec that surfing was LJ

― And thusly create the illusion of babby (forksclovetofu), Friday, 29 April 2011 13:00 (2 weeks ago)

ha!

did they rename mime onion knight in the psp port? or squire?

*crosses arms* the oracle's sleep spell has a better range & success rate

as a guy who relied heavily on crowd-control stuff like sleep i totally see where you're coming from lamp, but thats why i loved the dancer's random status dance - in one move you can have the whole board incapacitated

im trying to remember what other cheap-ass cc i would use, i think calculatin' was prob my main go-to for that

time mages can be really effective controllers too esp since haste/slow are almost always 80%+ manipulating RT is one of the easiest ways to slide through tough story battles since its so cheap

who are yalls favorite characters btw... im sure we all agree the shitty twins were the worst

also, what's your preferred chocobo:person ratio in a party

i always really liked ovelia but only because she had such a sweet class *whistles*

i never use monsters in battle (except v rarely for the fun of mounted combat) but a character + one chocobo party is p cool

i used NO chocobos at any point on this last playthru
orlando breaks the game basically but damn he is a badass

'bos make good ridin, which is why i generally liked to tuck one or two into my party for characters who i need to be extra mobile

iirc correctly there are a couple of maps where you need a chocobo to reach the buried item? or maybe a ninja w/ the +1 jump shoe could reach it? i always though it was shitty you couldnt ride the wolves, wouldve been p badass

thanks for the thoughts folks. reading this thread is sealing the deal for me i think.

kinda love this thread even though i've never played fft

also forx: did you beat deep dungeon? & how many of the secret characters did you get?

on this go round, i made a real decision not to character grind or hunt for secrets or anything so i don't think i did ANY of the hidden things. i really meant to beat it this time!

so no cloud.

on my final playthrough i finally tackled deep dungeon and got every hidden character + ultima. cloud sucked :/

none of the hidden characters except MUSTADIO are all that useful (oh wait is beowulf a 'hidden character'?) esp because by the time you get that far into chapter four you probably have your preferred attack team already levelled up

yeah mustadio owns

mustadiowns

i found myself perpetually torn between fielding a team of 'names' and my loyalty to the footsoldiers who i'd been developing at the beginning of the game

how much of a pain is it to run psx roms? really want 2 play this now but dont want to deal w/ digging out my playstation...

i think on my 'perfect game' file one of the stipulations was that you only had 'name' characters (which i think means you do get the three generics that youre gifted at the end of the first castle battle) & i h8d it. partially cuz it meant levelling rafa & retard since theyre one of the few name characters you get early on but also because i loved the sprites for most of the job classes more than i loved the sprites for the pc classes

lmao 'rafa & retard'

yeah this is totally making me want to dust off my ps2 and start a new game :/

I'm telling u guys: go psp

^^^ truth bomb

seriously with the exception of brink on my pc recently, i would say 95% of my gaming in the past like 12 motnhs has been PSP, and the other 5% is iphone!

Did they improve anything in the PSP version besides the translation, particularly gameplay-wise? Your suggestion to get a PSP and this game is actually kinda tempting to me, but god knows I've failed so many times to get more than 30-40 hours into this game. The grinding and random encounters and having badly built characters always killed my interest before I get through it all. If I ever do it again, I'm probably gonna have a major plan mapped out for the classes before I even start.

Sold my copy of FFT and FFVII to some dude on CL when I needed dosh. Never really played FFT yet.

Waiting for PSN to come back up so I can get both for the psp.

on a related note, bought Ys I & II today for the plane ride home tomorrow. Let's see how long it takes me to beat 'em.

Theres new quests and local online pvp and coop, none of which got any use in my playthru.
The retranslation is great and theres a bunch of new animated sequences that any fan will appreciate.

Weirdly, the slowdown is still in play during spells

Im gonna say this once more and then i'll stop: if you have fond memories of fftactics and u buy a psp and ff tactics, you will not be sorry

not all of us are carpeting our mansions in ipad2s here forx...

i found my old 'perfect game' save btw... p sickening how many hours i put in w/o finishing

I should drag out my disc and finish this so I can finally closet the PS2. The thing is I have an 11 week old but she'll probably like it.

Oh and btw I have a douche party with a bard, a dancer and a calculator, and I pretty much run auto-battle all the time. Word: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/21850

speakin of gamefaqs, this is crucial for any playthru:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3876

also what are you guys talking about the story is the second best story ever told on the PS
this and xenogears

unwittingly manipulated gnostic cults ftw

smh

there are so many great little details about this game that dont ever end up mattering at all

anyway i am playing this game again and really enjoying it, theres just so much stuff and somehow most of the battles are genuinely interesting to fight despite my having put like thousands of hours of my life into playing this game and understanding how it works

shocked they haven't made an FFT2 yet.

favourite class: time mage. i like their hats

this comment traveled thru time from 3 years ago to be super OTM right now

i missed this thread :)

Haste and Slow opened my eyes to the idea of "power scaling" in gaming in general. As an 18- or 19-year old I expected each successive class unlock to present progressively bloodier and higher-damage skill and spell options. It felt like Time Mage took ages to unlock and was kind of pathetic,

it was only much later when I realized that there's a reason they don't give you Time Mage right away and make you work for it.

secret hunt is the most busted ability in the game?

shocked they haven't made an FFT2 yet.

they have! but they're for GBA/DS. i played the first one (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance) and it's fun but suffers in comparison to the original. they added a Judge system which is sometimes fun but mostly annoying. and the story (disclosure: i only played through about 12 hours or so) was pretty mediocre.

oh, duh, i'm sure you know about those. i guess you mean a sequel that takes place during the Lion War and isn't about daydreaming schoolchildren?

i liked the first ds fft but it doesnt have the same depth as the psx game

rn i am fighting the urge to manage my level advancement to maximize stat growth because i really dont want to fall down that rabbithole

i thought the setup of the gba one was really affecting

it sort of felt arbitrary and failed to compel once it got to landmarks on maps, though, a bit like legend of mana

yeah, i tried ffta and it's not really much of a game. but maybe i should go back to it?

1997 Developer Interview, originally featured in Famicon Tsuushin magazine, newly translated:

http://shmuplations.com/fft/

nice
i should play disgaea

disgaea is extremely anime voice but the way it encourages experimentation and exploits is sui generis and great. i haven't played since the PS2 but i've heard the recent PC port isn't great.

hmmmm
https://noisypixel.net/fae-tactics-switch-pc-spring-2020/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2OcmU-KV-I

also the tactics ost is on spotify now so i'm playing that